Athena Ex Nihilo

At the time of the Greek junta, in an isolated army camp, a lieutenant forces a soldier to teach him the tango in order to ask the wife of his Colonel to dance with him.

Four men meet in a coffee bar, where they discuss their views on life, love, and the opposite sex. As their conversation progresses, they realise they have far more in common with each other than they anticipated.

Three separate narratives each following a love story between a foreigner and a Greek. Each story represents a different generation falling in love during a time of socioeconomic turmoil that dominates Southern Europe as a whole, only to connect as a single story in the end.

In the 1960s Greek countryside, a six-year-old gypsy has to cope with school bullying, an abusive father, and a racist society. His dream of becoming a musician seems impossible. Nevertheless, the boy will not give up: he intends to become a world-class clarinetist.

Vasilis lives with his family in a small mountain village in the Greek countryside. When he is not supervising the workers on his estate, Vasilis kills time at the café drinking and gambling. The only thing that breaks Vasilis' routine is Tania, the singer at the local nightclub... There, Vasilis finds refuge from the meaninglessness of a life that seems to have been imposed on him...

Three tortured souls in an underground parking lot; a little girl arrives; a crime is committed and tension keeps rising in this claustrophobic psychological thriller.

How does music mark what unfolds between life and death? Can a musical ritual be both ancient and contemporary, nostalgic yet absolutely relevant? Throughout Greece and the southern Balkans, music-making is often linked with the customs and traditions of the cycle of life – events of exceptional significance for every community.

A documentary about the origins and legacy of Bouzouki, an instrument which dominated the Greek folk music era of the 2Oth century in Greece.