Landscape in the mist = Topio stin omichli [NTSC]

Theo Angelopoulos is internationally recognised as Greece’s leading filmmaker. Refusing to engage with cinema as a popular art, he instead has created an oeuvre of work committed to exploring the mytho-poetic possibilities of motion pictures. His work, too, can be understood increasingly as an exploration of, at first, Greece’s, and more recently, Europe’s, political and cultural legacy and contradictions. “Landscape in the mist” is on the face of it a simple story. Two children, Voula and Alexander, have been told by their mother that their father now resides in Germany. She does not want to admit to her children that they are illegitimate. The children, desiring their father who they have only ever dreamt about, decide to run away and find him in Germany. The road movie that unfolds becomes a series of symbolic tableaux through which Angelopoulos examines a contemporary Europe of ruthless economic and social borders, a Europe in which the divisions of East and West, rich and poor, affect every encounter the children have. In their fate, we can read a long history of post-World War II immigration that is not only about the loss of notions of home, but also about the loss of traditional ties of family, ritual and space. In a sense, “Landscape in the mist” is a requiem to the loss of innocence - not only that of the children, but also for Europe itself. Music by Eleni Karaindrou. In Greek with English subtitles.