Agapi Manoura

Crete 1897. Greek rebels gained their freedom by fighting in the mountains. An allied fleet of French, English, Italian and Russian warships anchored in the port of Chania in protecting Greek and Turkish inhabitants. Rosa Bonaparte, accompanied by twelve girls off at a deserted beach with all the equipment of a Marseille brothel. Installed in a wing of a huge, ruined former Town Hall, where the officers of the allied fleet meet and entertain in the evenings surrounded by undercover agents, military connectors, and speculators : an East-West mosaic of languages, costumes and intrigue ...

At a male brothel named "Hawaii," two trans sex workers—one younger and full of hope, the other older and disillusioned—share a tender, late-night conversation about love and the search for meaning in a world that barely acknowledges their existence. As tensions rise over the impending release of their shared pimp from prison, their fragile bond is tested. The younger believes he’ll finally be saved by love, dreaming of marriage and a better life. But the older warns him of the brutal truth: they are nothing more than commodities in a cruel system. When the pimp announces his engagement to the daughter of a rival crime boss, the younger sex worker is pushed to the edge. What follows is an unexpected act of violence that shatters their connection—and ends in a grotesque act of betrayal that turns his body into a macabre feast at the wedding dinner.

Two parallel stories complement each other. The first recounts the investigation of a journalist and an actress who, through a radio program, attempt to identify parallels between terrorist acts of the present and the past. The second takes us back to 1948 and describes the events that led to the murder of American journalist George Polk in Thessaloniki, guided by the investigation of the two protagonists and the testimonies of various individuals.