Riverbanks

Epirus, province of Pogoni, on the borderline with Albania. Emigration and a sense of death scattered in the air, in the light. Few are left. Human figures that look as if they were part of the landscape. In a place surrounded by mountains: polyphonic songs. The silences, the pauses between the voices and the music that stream out of the soil. Through the cross of personal voices, that of parti, giristi, klosti and isocrati, a collective harmony emerges. The film strives to grasp the rhythm of the soul of Epirus.

Nicolas is a shepherd. He is around twenty years old, thin and spirited. Constantina is eighteen years old. Constantina fell in love with Nikolas the very first time she saw him with his lyre at the bull sacrifice ritual. She entered the whirlpool of ecstasy and became his lover. Their relationship was clearly physical, all other things were setting them apart. Constantina decides that they should break up. "We come from different places and head in different directions", she says. When she finds out that she is pregnant, she does not tell Nikolas.

A young American woman returns to her Greek roots in search of her real father. Accompanied by her stepfather, she shatters the very myths designed to protect her. She uncovers an unlikely relationship between those who raised her, a globe-trotting photojournalist and Athanasia. Athanasia, a girl with no right in life. A choice of nature, but not of her community. Angela finds her father and discovers her mother.

Centres on two brothers, Stelios and Yannis. The impulsive Stelios skips their small town, deserts from the army, and is thought dead, until Yannis, now a city cop, recognizes his name on the papers of an illegal immigrant seaman. He begins a search for his lost brother, a search that takes him across many borders: between past and present, between Greece and its neighbouring countries, between one identity and another.

It is on Ascension Day that Zoe, a brilliant computer analyst, visits the National Park in the center of Athens with her daughter, Katerina. That afternoon in the park, Zoe experiences an overwhelming array of instinctive compulsions and transforms into an ancient Maenad in ecstatic frenzy, even capable of murder. Instincts and animals get loose and panic takes over.

The truth behind the mysterious murder of Loula, a sexy young Greek woman, is gradually revealed by a documentary film crew investigating the case. What they discover is a tale of ambition, passion and betrayal.