Elpiniki Voutsa-Rentzepopoulou

We are in Athens. The city is like a ship sailing upon the Aegean Sea with passengers of all cultures. There is not enough space for everyone on this ship and so the class cannibalism begins. The heroine of the film vacillates between individualism and collective action, the luxury of abstention from public life and the emotional struggle of participating in it. Will she be able to save the next child from being eaten?

Paola, Betty and Eva are three trans women in their 60s who have known each other for more than forty years. All three of them started making their living early in their youth as sex workers in Athens, Greece. In “The Oleanders” Betty Vakalidou, Eva Koumarianou & Paola Revenioti revisit all the different places in the city where they used to work, socialize, get harassed or arrested by the cops, fight for their rights, have fun and find love. The unapologetic, humorous, and empowering discussion between Eva, Betty & Paola is a history of Athens as well as a history of sexuality in this region.

Paola Revenioti and the filmmaking team Paola Team Documentaries present their first documentary feature. Kaliardáwas the secret language of the homosexual community in Greece, from the 40s until the first years following the fall of the dictatorship in the mid-70s. Paola became acquainted with the use of kaliardá towards its end, in the 80s. We started out with an aim to record the history of kaliardá, but along the way we realized we were recording the history of the homosexual community in Greece during the twentieth century. Themes started emerging, such as love, sexuality, hangouts, problems faced by people at the time and how conditions gradually changed. In the documentary, we speak with academics and people from the street who have first-hand experience of our topic.