Antonis and Konstantinos Koufalis, The mist
In the nightscape of a city in the neighbourhoods with the tall apartment blocks, the “graceless, perpendicular straight lines of concrete”, two young friends, Stephanos and Doukas, present a panoramic view of liminal social landscapes. The events they narrate as they ride a bike around the city streets take us into a world of ruthless violence, a world in decay. At the core of their stories is the family and the inhuman world of adults who pass on their impasses in a tormenting way to the underage. Mothers who molest and pimp their children for money or a fix, respectable employees who cram into the basement of a video club to enjoy a few moments of lust as they watch all kinds of sexual deviation. Living in this paranoid world of senseless violence, where the words change meaning and the emotions are reversed, where punishment is a gift and love is measured in blows and swearing, Doukas and Stephanos are trying to escape by directing imaginary bullets to those they hold responsible for their traumas. The accounts of their life are mixed with those they watch avidly in the dark hall of an old cinema. The portraits they sketch for each other are made with materials borrowed from the characters on screen. Thus their life, as they say themselves, seems like an oft-played DVD and the mist that swathes their childhood world, their memory, with the blurred veil that covers the frames of a worn-out film. What they may be trying is to claim back their shadow, to return to three-dimensional reality and plan their course anew.
DOUKAS (hesitantly): You know…
STEPHANOS: I know you’re hesitating.
DOUKAS: They haven’t wronged me. Let them grow old.
STEPHANOS (menacingly): You’re fucking looking for trouble.
DOUKAS: But they seem so innocent.
STEPHANOS (still menacingly): They only seem innocent.
DOUKAS (ignores him): Why stain our hands? Which life isn’t worth something? What’s done is done.
STEPHANOS: It isn’t done. It will be done.
DOUKAS: Compromise.
STEPHANOS (taken by surprise): Compromise?
DOUKAS: Get rid of one of them. Spare her.
STEPHANOS (decisively): No way.
DOUKAS: Don’t be a monster! Let your mother live. Your ties with her are different, you can’t undo them by force. I know how you feel… It’s unbearable for a child to be rented out by the hour.
STEPHANOS (Is listening to him indifferently.)
DOUKAS: There’s something else too…
STEPHANOS: What?
DOUKAS: Don’t think I’m trying to shy away from you…
STEPHANOS: Say it.
DOUKAS: I know you’ll get pissed off now…
STEPHANOS: Spit it out.
DOUKAS (bows his head in guilt): I wanted right from the start…
(Stiffly, unemphatically.) I have nothing to do with … Never had.
STEPHANOS (chokingly, holding back his anger): Nothing to do with what?
DOUKAS: Guns!…
STEPHANOS: And what about this? (He takes an invisible gun out of his pocket.)
DOUKAS: I took it from the cinema! Where else? I’ve borrowed it from my heroes… Cinema has solved all my problems!
STEPHANOS (ironically): How I love that…
Director: Themelis Glynatsis
Music – live electronics: Sister Overdrive
Actors: Christos Pitsas, Omiros Poulakis, Stella Pozapalidou
Discussion moderator: Irene Moundraki