Production Director
Four episodes, four instances from a man’s life covering 25 years, from 1965 in Germany to 1990 in Athens. The episodes seem to be irrelevant to one another, yet they all focus on male powerplay, reveal the self-consciousness and moderation of the protagonist’s idiosyncrasy and depict some special aspects of the Greek male mentality. Probably Nikos Panayotopoulos’ most personal film, covering a substantial period of his generation’s years, “I’m dreaming of my friends” is based on the book by Dimitris Nollas, looks a lot like a “road movie” and features an all-male cast, as if there’s no room for women in it.
Michalis returns to the tobacco growers of his rural village after having spent some time in the city and persuades them to form a collective, rather than suffer the poverty-inducing prices they are paid for their crops by tobacco brokers. They agree not to sell to any of the brokers and start to form a farmers' group. When one of the farmers breaks the agreement and is found dead, Michalis is accused. However, rather than expose the farmers' plight and give publicity to the brokers' greed, the motive the government gives for the killing is thi asimanton aformin, for unimportant reasons.