Greece

Synopsis

Four undertakers in financial trouble latch onto a one-off opportunity to change their lives and bid farewell to a profession they entered for a while, but got stuck in for good. On the promise of a large fee, they fulfill the dying wish of a rich Greek who lived his life abroad: he wants them to take his body from Athens to a village in Boeotia for burial...on foot. Deciding to grant his bizarre request, they embark on an odyssey, which soon becomes an unexpected voyage of discovery.

Director's Statement

We live in a culture that detests death and, thus, detests the dead themselves. Everything is expedited so that the departed disappear as quickly as possible; only the dead guy in this film doesn’t want to go before fulfilling one last homecoming journey to where his heart leads him – even though it is no longer beating. The film is a road movie on a coffin. An odyssey of a dead Ulysses that his fellow-pallbearers don’t have it in them to abandon until he reaches his Ithaca, although they never knew him alive and cannot possibly imagine what he might consider his Ithaca –which deep down is each one’s own private Ithaca The scorching blacktop of the national highway turns into a calm homecoming sea in this casket road movie, where four pallbearers and a mysterious dead guy each return, albeit belatedly, to where each really –as opposed to imaginatively– belongs. In a self-awareness journey towards maturity –howsoever they each perceive maturity, or the journey, for that matter– they shall come to a personal catharsis through revealing all secrets, shedding all tears and living all fears. Four different solitary men, who in reality are more afraid of life than death itself, shall be taught by a dead guy that, even as we carry death on our shoulders, life still takes us where it will.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Renos Haralambidis

Written by: Renos Haralambidis

Produced by: Aris Dayios, Aggelo Veneti, Iraklis Mavroidis, Takis Nikolakopoulos

Cinematography: Kostis Gkikas

Editing: Yannis Sakaridis

Production Design: Dimitris Ziakas

Cast: Yannis Zouganelis, Takis Spiridakis, Renos Haralambidis, Alkis Panagiotidis

Nominations and Awards

  • Feature Film Selection 2010