Γιάννης Κοντούλης

Mr. Spyros is released from prison after having served time for the murder of his wife's lover. He accidentally meets a young couple who want to get married, but the mother of the girl is against the marriage. When Mr. Spyros realizes that the girl is his daughter and her mother his wife, he makes an important decision.

One of filmmaker and expatriate writer Adonis Kyrou's best-known quotes translates roughly as "I urge you: Learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." The same could be said of Kyrou's own directorial work in Greece before the advent of the 1967 dictatorship forced him to flee to Paris. This confused mess, the first cinematic attempt at portraying the Greek resistance in WWII, caused quite a stink upon release, as much for its surprising style (recalling that of Bertolt Brecht) as for its subject matter. Reaction to its screening as part of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival's International Critic's Week was heated and divisive, proving Kyrou's later statement by rising above its own inherent silliness to achieve a sort of rarefied critical status. It's bad drama that nonetheless succeeds by dint of audacity more than quality (a comment which could apply equally to the work of many exploitation directors like Jean Rollin whom Kyrou later so lovingly profiled).

In 1827, at an inn in Nafplio, the capital of the newly established Greek state, a group of people from different parts of Greece are celebrating the defeat of the Turkish fleet in Navarino. However, in their patriotic fervor they drink too much, and a hot-tempered Arvanite, not understanding the dialect of a Cretan and thinking he has insulted him, injures him with a pistol. Police Inspector Dionysios Fantes from the Ionian Islands arrives at the scene to interrogate the witnesses but he too can't understand their various dialects as they can't understand his.

Frustrated and unemployed after being sexually harassed repeatedly, Stella decides to play the role of a guy, using the identity of her twin brother (who is living in Australia) hoping to get a job. She immediately wins the trust of her new employers and soon gets promoted to manager. The troubles begin when she falls in love with her boss' son.

Taxidi Tou Melitos is about the fear that most elderly people experience: approaching death. Leon (Stavros Xenides) and Zaharoula (Betty Livanou) are heading out for their annual vacation at a summer resort. Instead of their usual carefree anticipation, their mood is subdued because their daughter has just married and is off on her honeymoon. Life is lonely without her and the couple cannot avoid the realization that death is not that far away for them. Once at the resort, Leon tries to overcome this nagging fear by taking a wild plunge in the ocean, naked, as he and Zaharoula are out walking on the beach. Taken up in the spirit of the moment, she joins him among the waves. The results, however, are not what they expected.

Thirty-year-old lower middle class Dimitris, faint-hearted and not particularly ambitious, is ready to jump at the opportunity that will get him handsomely provided. He wavers between yesterday, the German occupation nightmare and his love debut with a neighbour and contemporary, fluid reality. He meets Thaleia, a rich woman his age, who frequents the same night club as him, but his daily routine is invariably the same. The closure of the small industry in Drapetsona, where he used to work for the last 8 years, and his relationship with Maria confront him with a different reality. Maria is a progressive, evening school teacher, full of dreams.

A deliberate injustice forces an orphaned music student to leave home, only to land a job as a pianist for an affluent woman's canaries. Now, it's time to turn the page. Can she find a bright future amid two hundred and one songbirds?