Film protest stirs deputy PM?s ire
Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos issued a stinging attack on the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) yesterday after a screening in Paris of Greek director Costa-Gavras?s 1969 anti-junta political thriller ?Z? was abandoned amid protests by students.
A statement from Pangalos?s office blamed the cancellation of the screening, which he and the filmmaker attended, on a ?terrorist-style intervention by French anarchists and Greek supporters of SYRIZA.?
Pangalos, who studied in France, is a personal friend of Costa-Gavras and is credited by some as being the source of the political slogan ?Z?, or ?He lives? in Greek, in reference to the assassination of politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963 by far-right extremists.
The protesters in Paris demanded that a 2009 film by Costa-Gavras, ?Eden is West?, about the journey of an illegal immigrant, be shown instead as a sign of support for hunger striking migrants in Athens.
