Sleepy Lights

The execution of 200 Greek resistance fighters by the German occupiers on May 1st, 1944 in Kaisariani, as reprisal for the Greek Resistance ambush against Nazis.

Director’s statement: “Electra is in her early 30s, living in Athens today. She is an artist, but she makes a living working as a babysitter. She is an activist and her boyfriend is a political prisoner. She feels lonely and is struggling to find her place in the world. We follow her as she meets the most important people in her life. Through these meetings, we understand better not only Electra, but also a whole generation of young people who feel stifled in this world. Capitalism, consumerism, globalization are currently being cast into doubt, so I needed to make a film that addresses all these things. What I’m interested in is showing how they affect our everyday life, our small decisions, our intimate relationships.”

Constantina Voulgaris’s first feature film is a delightful anomaly in contemporary cinema, sort of like a Cat Power song. Raw, earnest, melancholy, awkward in parts, razor sharp in others, it's lyrical, yet with an undercutting touch of offbeat humor. And more than anything it's unapologetically a girl's bedroom song, an utterly sincere home movie. Made with the ever-generous currency of a cast and crew of friends, and the ample downtime that Greek summer-in-the-city affords, when everybody else is sunning and hooking up out in the islands, it's a film about two exiles -- in Athens, in summer, in love. A sentimental dance between a girl and a boy who could be stuck in downtown any-ville, yearning to be with each other but too cool to dare, too chicken to admit it, too clumsy not to step on each other's Doc Martens, and too damn sentimental not to surrender, in the end, to that old-fashioned thing called love.