Behind the haystacks

Original title: Piso apo tis thimonies
Genre: Drama
Director: Asimina Proedrou
Country: Greece, Germany, North Macedonia
Year of production: 2022
Czas: 118 min

Awards and nominations:
2022 Thessaloniki Film Festival: Best Debut; FIPRESCI Award: Greek Film Critics’ Association Award; Special Mention; Best Location Award
2023 International Film Festival of India: Best Debut
2023 Hellenic Film Academy Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best First-time Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound
2023 Official submission of Greece for the Best International Feature Film category of the 96th Academy Awards

It’s 2015. Europe must deal with a migrant crisis. A wave of immigrants from Africa reaches the borders of North Macedonia and Greece, disturbing everyday lives of inhabitants of frontier towns and villages. Some of them decide to help the exhausted refugees. But for others, the people determined to illegally get to Europe are a chance for easy money. Stergios, entangled in debt, agrees to his brother-in-law’s idea to smuggle people in exchange for a hefty fee. What he doesn’t realise, though, is that this spiral of lies and events will take a heavy toll on his family and him. Thematically and formally bold, this hypnotising film by Asimina Proedrou has been praised as one of the most interesting debuts and a leading representative of the contemporary Greek neorealism. Following the rules of an ancient tragedy, the film is a metaphor of a country plagued by economic, moral, and political crises.

Author: Rafał Pawłowski

Director:
Asimina Proedrou – for 15 years she worked in a financial department of an international corporation while simultaneously studying directing and screenwriting. Her acclaimed short film “Red Hulk” (2016) established her as a bold, experimental auteur interested in social issues. She graduated from the the Sarajevo Talents 2015 and the Berlinale Talents 2015. She developed the screenplay for her feature directorial debut during the Berlinale Script Station 2016, the First Film First 2017–2018, and the EAVE 2018.

   subtitles in Polish and English