A tale of racism and redemption plays out in the city’s underbelly

Thanos Anastopoulos’s award-winning ‘Diorthosi’ is playing this week at Danaos cinema

By Phoebe Fronista - Kathimerini English Edition

There are some films that offer their point of view with all the delicacy of a steamroller. “Diorthosi” (Correction) is not one of these films.

With the utmost subtlety, it strikes a blow at the collective Greek gut, addressing the practically taboo theme of xenophobia. Thanos Anastopoulos’s camera is a detached observer, never wagging a finger at us; the shots are filmed so naturally as to seem almost documentary-like. However, the poetry emanating from the shots of a cheering soccer stadium framed to seem like a holy temple, a passing Good Friday procession of the bier and illegal immigrants fleeing the police with their wares on their back belie their simplicity.

Nothing here is what is seems. We meet the protagonist, Giorgos Simeoforidis – a clever wordplay on the actor’s actual name of Giorgos Symeonidis, and the Greek word “simeoforos” (flag-bearer) – upon his release from prison. We walk the streets of Athens with him, streets that many of us rarely stroll down, and perhaps never have: the alleys behind the Panathinaikos Stadium, Menandrou Street, Sophocleous Street; roads that have become the mainstay of Chinese, Nigerian, Albanian and Pakistani immigrants.

Simeoforidis lurks, stalker-like, around a single mother (Ornela Kapetani) – the kebab joint where she works is owned by a jovial Albanian (Buyar Alimani) – and her young daughter (Savina Alimani). Simeoforidis is himself stalked by dangerous former associates. Through this forbidding atmosphere, we try to unravel the mystery of this silent anti-hero, who utters no more than 40 words throughout the film.

Symeonidis’s impassive Buster Keaton mask and matter-of-fact movements manage to portray more despair and determination than any wordy monologue, yet we are at a loss to understand exactly who he is, and what he is trying to correct. That information is fed to us with all the speed of an IV drip, but the suspense is nerve-wracking. He ploughs on with his unspoken goal of redemption resolutely, almost heroically, stoic in the face of the harshness the city offers him.

The final scenes of the film are harrowing because, ultimately, we do not feel catharsis. Is it being withheld purposely, or are we being told that some things can never be cleansed from our soul?

Despite its wins for best screenplay and best actor at the 2007 Thessaloniki Film Festival, at a recent screening, only five people and myself watched a movie that has flown so low on moviegoers’ radar that it has been rendered almost invisible. This is a shame, for the subject alone is extremely powerful, and deserving of a much larger audience than it has been allotted.

“Diorthosi” is Anastopoulos’s second movie – after 2003’s “All the Weight of the World” – and was inspired by true events that occurred after a 2004 Greece-Albania soccer match, in which Albania was the victor and after which an Albanian fan ended up dead.

The film is now playing at Danaos cinema (109 Kifisias, tel 210.692.2655).