Invincible Lovers (1988)

In this avant-garde look at a series of unique or eccentric men and women, director Stavros Tornes has created a film that is visually engaging, but too obscure in many points to be understood. The main protagonists are a young taxi driver -- a man who has had some very unusual, puzzling, and inspirational experiences -- and a middle-aged painter he gains as a new friend. The two men are complemented by a few tough women (all played by the same actress), a pair of verbose politicos, and a handful of other distinctive characters. By the end of the movie, transformations are in store for the pair of friends, reflecting the tenor of the film throughout. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This highly acclaimed drama from Greek writer/director Sotiris Goritsas, inspired by the Sotiris Dimitriou short story, represented Greece as an official selection for the 1994 Cannes Film Festival Directors' Fortnight. It concerns two young Greek men seeking refuge in Albania. Thomas (Vassilis Eleftheriadis) and Achilleas (Ierassimos Skiadaeressis) make an illegal late-night run at the Greek border, joined by young Nikos (Antonis Manolas), a child whose mother had been killed by Albanian guards. Returning to Athens, they find that the land they had missed and dreamed of so often has changed, refusing to accept the returning refugees or even see them as Greek -- the locals refer to the trio as "Albanians" throughout the film. Demoralized and disillusioned, Thomas is accidentally killed while working at a building site to make ends meet, and Achilleas and Nikos decide to return to their Albanian village rather than stay in an Athens, which clearly has no place for them anymore.

Antigone returns from Athens to her troubled hometown, determined to keep a low profile. But this is a complex, difficult woman — her name is no coincidence — and her run-ins with the town's brutish men set a dramatic series of events in motion. A moral drama with an edge.

Young man arrives in Athens to seek his fortune.

All indications were that Maraki was made for great things, for honor and distinctions. And yet contrary to all expectations our heroine cops out. She refuses to take the university entrance exams is left behind in the country town selling fruit tarts. No one can figure out how come that whiz kid got left behind. Neither can anyone understand why Maraki isn't mad at fate for having wronged her so flagrantly. How does she manage to be so creative and optimistic, ready to do battle with the everyday injustices of life wherever the may appear? She appears to understand something that all the others ignore.

A young emerald miner is in love with a girl but doesn't ask her to marry him because he cannot support her financially.

The ruins of paganism and the birth of Christianity portrayed by immobile people along with music.

A typical experimental film, in which a variety of audiovisual techniques are used to create the sense of polymorphic eroticism as developed by European and Mediterranean cinematography of the 20th century. Combining the methods of “animation” and “live action”, this intricate work embodies the idea of an “ars combinatoria”. The structure is loose, with neither a central axis nor a point where everything converges, contributing greatly to the open-ended character of the film, where rhythm is the key element.

A surreal account of Lizzie as she struggles to make life fit.

Stavros and Charlotte - i.e. the director and his partner in life and art, Charlotte van Gelder - are wandering the streets of a burdensome reality like immigrants, tracing the world around them through friendships, journeys and political quests. Made with minimal means with a few rolls of black and white film they managed to scrape together, this is a thoroughly unconventional film that defies traditional narrative structures, spectacularly revealing the director's true vision: a primordial cinema full of imagery that comes out of nowhere and communicates freely, like a small wonder. A large slice of the international film critic community - including Frenchman Louis Skorecki who described the film as a comet - will adore "Coatti" and continue to support Tornes' lonely path until the end.

A blacksmith and a car mechanic, harboring a hostile relationship they inherited from their grandfathers, must come to terms with a new way of dealing with each other, when the blacksmith faces economic struggle and the mechanic offers to buy him out.

A sociology professor going through a mid-life crisis resigns from his job, abandons his family and lives isolated in his country house. His only incentive for living is the faded face of an unknown girl in a photograph he had taken in the past and whom he now starts looking for.

Ricky rides her motorcycle among real and imagined dangers, to arrive unscathed, but unalterably changed, at the end of summer. The unrelenting wind of the season disrupts a landscape of inaction, theft and drug use. The end of innocence has already begun and a new path, dark and hopeful, stands waiting like the ships beyond her window. It will be an act of violence that thrusts the girl into womanhood and leads her to a new life where, not without pain, everything is possible.

The friendship between two young boys during the summertime in 60's Chios Island.

A love story with unpredictable twists and turns between perception and reality, love and its complications and the faults of human nature, Apo Erota (Lovestruck) is a romantic tale with a twist.

The story of Nikos Belogiannis member of the communist party and officer of Ellas that has come back to Greece only to get arrested, tried for espionage on behalf of Russia and executed.

Eva, a young woman and a student of classical singing, decides to meet her father, who is unaware of her existence. Thomas works as a guard in a truck lot. He lives in a container and aspires to nothing. Their meeting will be a meeting of two different worlds and the relationship they develop will be all their own; a relationship beyond easy classification. (Thessaloniki International Film Festival)