Manos Katrakis

A quartet of short stories about Greece during the various occupations during World War 2

The inextricably intertwined stories of five sex workers who live in a brothel at Pireas harbor.

Andreas, nephew of the abbot of the Monastery of Dionysios, who died eight years previously, arrives at Agion Oros (Mount Athos) with a team of smugglers of antiquities, with the intention of stealing a gold cross set with precious gems, known as the Cross of Alexander the Great. He earns the trust of the meek and hospitable monks. However, a Jewish girl, Anna - whom, while still a baby during the war, her father had entrusted to the care of the hermit Vasileios - continues to pretend she is a young monk. She manages gradually to discover the entire scheme and acts to foil their plot.

Living in exile after the death of their father, the grown children of a murdered and usurped king converge to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge.

An old communist returning to Greece after 32 years in the Soviet Union is disillusioned with the state of things.

Young Antinoos is on vacation on an island where he meets a seductive woman, Eva, who is having a miserable time with her middle-aged husband, Alekos. Eva is attracted to Antinoos, who is her missing part, but at the same time, she feels guilty and tries to suppress her passion.

An adaptation of one of the greatest greek novellas ('The Murderess' by Alexandros Papadiamantis). Fragkogiannou (Maria Alkaiou), a hard-done by, deranged woman after a life full of hardship, recalls the past by her newborn girl grandchild’s crib. Her mother was a wicked woman and one of her sons was a criminal. Lost in a haze, she strangles the baby as she is concvinced that girls can cause their family only trouble. Later, she lets a little girl drown in a well, while she drowns three other little girls, one of whom is a newborn baby. This is her way of sparing children and parents of the inevitable suffering in life.

Two ambitious young employees land a job at the small store of an avaricious man, intending to stay there no more than a few months. But, fate has other plans in store for them. How many dreams must one sacrifice to find happiness?

Intent on hurting herself, a beautiful but desperate daughter crashes her car on the day of her mother's wedding, unfolding a tragic tale of love, deception, and murder behind the closed doors of a wealthy family.

After the end of World War II, a Greek woman who was imprisoned in a German concentration camp returns to Greece. She is a woman broken by the hardships, but at the same time determined to find the man who caused her all this misery, namely the one who reported her to the Gestapo as a Jew.

Two rival brothers vie for the same woman against the backdrop of peasant revolts in their Greek homeland. In Thessaly in 1907, a man incites the poor farmers to take over the land they work for the benefit of the landowners. Odysseus (Nikos Kourkoulos), the son of one such landowner (Manos Katrakis), refuses to clash with the farmers.

A police officer tries to discover the murderer of his brother, who was a pianist and a morphine. As a member of the Drug Enforcement Department, he tries to identify the head of a drug dealer gang. His unorthodox way of acting upsets his superiors, even though they allow him to continue his investigations. When the gang discovers that he is a police officer, he makes him a drug addict, but he manages to detoxify and eventually capture the gang's brain.

In Thebes in ancient Greece, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother Jocasta, having two sons - Eteocles and Polyneices - and two daughters - Ismene and Antigone. King Oedipus dies a beggar in the exile after gouging out his own eye, and Eteocle agrees to reign in Thebes in alternating years with Polynices. However, he refuses to resign after the first year and Polynieces raises an army and attacks Thebes, and they kill each other. The ruler of Thebes Creon decrees that Eleocles should have an honorable burial while the body of the traitor Polyneices should be left on the battlefield to be eaten by the jackals and vultures. However, Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon's surviving son Haemon, defies Creon's orders and buries her brother. When Creon is reported of the attitude of Antigone, he sentences her to be placed in a tomb alive. Antigone hangs herself in the tomb and Haemon tries to kill his father first and then he kills himself with his sword...

A poor neighborhood of Athens, Asyrmatos, is the center of the world for the people who live there and try in every way to escape from poverty and destitution. A handsome released youth, Ricos (Alekos Alexandrakis), is trying to make money, at the same time that his lover, Stefi (Aliki Georgoulis), is seeing other men and her father, Nekrophoras (Manos Katrakis), is trying to contribute in family finances. Rico will set up a job, but will spend the money raised before he can put it into action. As a result, one of his "partners" (Alekos Petsos) will commit suicide, leaving his pregnant wife, Eleni (Aleka Paizis), to her fate. Rikos, his beloved and her father, defeated and disappointed because of the expectations that were never fulfilled, will be forced to come to terms with the harsh reality.

A new, ambitious prosecutor undertakes a great trial for a murder trial but things get very confused. Instead of the accused, slowly proved that culprit is actually the wife of itself.