BAR 90' / Drama/ 2003

Synopsis

Two stories unfold simultaneously with Lea at the center of both.  One story takes place in Montevideo, Uruguay, the other in Nicosia, Cyprus. Lea’s disappeared brother is the catalyst for both stories. While in Nicosia a group of scientists is using the DNA method to reveal the identities of persons long dead, in Montevideo, Lea sees her brother in a photograph together with a tango singer.  Are the two stories a game of parallel times?  Does one of them belong to a different dimension? The answer is securely hidden inside …the BAR.

“In all fictions, each time a man meets diverse alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the work of the virtually impossible-to-disentangle Ts’ui Pen, the character chooses-simultaneously-all of them. He creates thereby, “several futures”, several times, which themselves proliferate and fork.  J.L.Borges (The Garden of Forking Paths)

A film about absence. About the thin line that separtates reality from imagination.

Stela Fyrogeni, Michael McKell, Yiannis Stankoglou, Achilleas Grammatikopoulos,
Maria Colombatti, Andreas Vasileiou, Keith James, Lenia Sorokkou

Written and Directed by: Aliki Danezi-Knutsen
Produced by: Anna Tsiarta
Co-Production: Cyprus Cinema Advisory Committee, National Greek Television (ERT S.A), Nicholas St. Moller (Denmark), XL Films (Uruguay)
Director of Photography: Cornelius Schultze-Kraft
Production Design: Pablo Montanez/Natassa Chryssafini
Costumes: Lisa Tsouloupas
Sound/Sound Design: Panos Tselekis
Editing: Marc Boulay
Additional Editing; Kenan Akkawi
Sound Mixing: Georgos Mikrogiannakis

Original Music Score by ACTIVE MEMBER

90 minutes
35mm Film/ 1:1.85 / Color
Drama
2003 Cyprus/Greece/Uruguay
English/Greek/Spanish

Official Selection Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Official Selection Rome International Film Festival
Official Selection Montevideo International Film Festival Mediterranean Film Festival, Coln
Greek Independents – United States Screenings (Chicago, Mumeum of Modern Image New York, San Fransisco Greek Film Festival)
Prague European Film Festival
Dublin European Film Festival
European Film Festival in Canada – Ottawa and Vancouver

Developed with the support of Media Programme of the European Union

Broadcasted by National Greek Television in May 2004

Eleytherotypia/ Nino Fenek Mikellides

Between Nicosia and Montevideo, Uruguay, unfolds the story of the film of Danezi-Knutsen, who has made a few years ago in Thessaloniki a particularly promising debute with her film “Roads and Oranges” (1996). Main character a woman taxi driver, Lea (Stela Fyrogeni), following a boyfriend in Montevideo in search of the disappeared for 12 years brother.Based on the story of a missing person, Danezi expands the issue of missing persons with references to missing persons in Cyprus during the Turkish invasion as well as the issue of missing persons in Uruguay during a dictatorial regime, while making a comment on the subject of fantasy and reality, the possibility of the existence of another dimension or even multiple possibilities and choices, bringing to mind the heroes of a Borges novel.
Main location where the story unfolds, a Bar (wonderful element of the film), that initially appears to be in Uruguay and which is then used as a link between Nicosia and Montevideo. The heroine comes and goes through  sometimes coming out in one or the other of the two cities. The persons move in a baroque atmosphere, with well thought shots of people, imaginative lighting and wonderfully evocative music, Danezi creates a movie showing a filmmaker with talent and originality.  There are some weaknesses in the film overall, but I have the impression that we are faced with a director who, wisely, honestly and above all with control, can offer a lot to the Greek cinema.

Variety/Review by Derek Elley

www.roadsandorangesfilms.com

“A clever central idea — a bar as a kind of waystation between a woman’s two lives”

 

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