Greece-France-Italy-Germany

TO VLEMMA TOU ODYSSEA

CREDITS 

35mm - Colore - 176'

Script: Theodoros Anghelopoulos
Screenplay: Theodoros Anghelopoulos con la partecipazione di Tonino Guerra, Petros Markartis, Giorgio Silvagni
Photography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Editing: Yannis Tsitsopoulos
Original Music: Eleni Karaindrou
Violin Solo: Kim Kashkashian
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Maïa Morgenstern, Erland Josephson, Thanassis Vengos, Yorgos Michalopulos, Dora Volonaki, Mania Papadimitriou.
Producer: Giorgio Silvagni, Eric Heumann, Dragan Ivanovic-Hevi, Ivan Milovanovic
Production: Theo Angelopoulos Productions, Greek Film Centre, MEGA Channel, Paradis Film, La Generale d'Images, La Sept Cinema, con la partecipazione di Canal +, Basic Cinematografica, Instituto Luce, RAI, Tele-Muenchen, Concorde Films, Herbert Kloider e in associazione con Channel 4
Distribution: Istituto Luce

SYNOPSIS

A. (H. Keitel), a Greek director, goes back to his native country for the première of his film and to look for three reels of a negative (The Weavers) exposed in 1905 by Maniakas brothers, pionieers of cinema, itinerant in the  Balkans. His quest journey crosses Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and lands to tormented Sarajevo where an old film librarian (E. Josephson) is waiting for him with the mythical find. (The part had been assigned to Gian Maria Volonté, who died after a few days shooting.)

CRITICAL NOTES

The tenth film of Anghelopoulos’s confirms that this isolated, peculiar and unequalled director is one of the few who can be ascribed the title of “European”: his is “an appeal to reason (not to the reason of State), that we need so that the relative sleep does not produce other Goya monsters” (Lorenzo Pellizzari). There is no return to Ithaca for his Ulysses: the epic turns into tragedy. The innocent look of the pioneers of cinema is lost forever. Grand Prix du Jury à Cannes 1995 when the Golden Palm was given to Underground by Emir Kusturica, in a sense Odyssey and Ilyad of this end of century. (M. Morandini)

SELECTED FESTIVAL AND AWARDS

1995 Cannes: Special Jury Award