Voyage to Cythera

Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Cast: Manos Katrakis, Giulio Broggi, Mary Chronopoulou, Dionyssis Papayannopoulos
Greece, West Germany, Italy, UK, 1984, 138', DCP, color
Greek, English with Turkish, English subtitles

Cythera, in Greek mythology, is the isle of dreams where one can dedicate oneself to happiness (or the pursuit thereof). In this quest within a quest, the tale of the father's return is told as if from the point of view of his son Telemachus and as if Telemachus were a filmmaker, as well as a middle-aged man with a son of his own. A film director, tired of the illusions and fictions of his profession, searches for a story of substance by attaching himself to an old man, a recently returned political exile. The man, away in the Soviet Union for 32 years and now stateless, finds himself at the beginning of a journey, not the end. In this journey to the dark side of Greek history where it crosses paths with myth, Angelopoulos evokes the past, present and future to bridge the gap between reality and the imagination.