Greek directors were weird long before Yorgos Lanthimos made his feature debut with Kinetta (2006) and soon after found great success with Dogtooth (2009). From the late ’60s and 70s, while Greek commercial cinema was in decline, new directors emerged with singular voices and a modernist approach, many of them inspired by the teachings and international appeal of the Nouvelle Vague. Among these unique visions, there were many controversial ones, and even some really weird ones. This article is a short introduction to the weirdest aspects of Greek cinema of the 20th century, through five notable examples that traverse a wide range of styles and genres, each weird in its own unique way.
Let’s leave films that are just subversive and creative aside, and focus on movies with a WTF-level of weirdness. Subversiveness in Greek cinema starts about 1967 with works like Nikos Papatakis’ The Shepherds of Calamity, a drama famous for its social critique through the controversial portrayal of a slightly kinky love affair between a poor peasant and a girl from a wealthy family. It was a favorite of Lanthimos. In the following decade, many movies used an eccentric style to portray the rock and roll spirit, or to tackle subjects regarding Greek counterculture, like Nikos Nikolaidis‘ The Wretches Are Still Singing (1979), or Nikos Zervos‘ entire filmography. As both these directors have been mentioned previously on this site, I won’t expand on them. There are many more and bizarre hidden gems out there, waiting to be discovered!
Let’s start with Idlers of the Fertile Land (1978) by Nikos Panayotopoulos, a director clearly inspired by the style of Luis Buñuel. This film more closely resembles the contemporary Greek Weird Wave in the way it builds an elliptical allegory of the absurd. We follow a wealthy family, a father and his three sons, as they isolate themselves in a mansion along with a maid played by sensual Olga Karlatos. They decide to pass the rest of their lives by sleeping and by doing literally nothing else, becoming increasingly idle. The central concept of rich guys isolating and destroying themselves by indulging in their vices is of course similar to Marco Ferreri‘s La Grande Bouffe (1973); it’s a caustic morality tale parodying laziness in exactly in the same way Bouffe parodies gluttony.
Our next selection is Mania (1985), an anarchic and oneiric parable commenting on our need to escape from “civilized” society, even if just for a bit. Haunting shots follow a young woman named Zoe, a program analyst for a big company, who finds herself in a series of escapades and dreamy encounters while strolling at a park. Her Bacchanalian odyssey and transformation have been compared with “Alice in Wonderland.” Suntan director Argyris Papadimitropoulos claims this movie as a favorite. As Zoe navigates through her surreal experiences, she grapples with the constraints of her daily life, leading to moments of profound introspection and liberation. This film’s rich visual style and evocative storytelling invite viewers to question the boundaries between reality and fantasy, making it a memorable exploration of the human psyche.
We now focus on the curious case of Stavros Tornes, an underrated low-budget director of just three feature movies and a few shorts. Danilo Treles (1986) finds him at his weirdest—pure Surrealism. Treles is a parable in the style of Samuel Beckett, about nothing and everything. People and masked figures search for an undefined something, while longing for mythical Andalusian musician Danilo Treles. “Treles” is Greek for “crazy acts,” and this movie is full of them. Vampires eat trees and mummies come back to life, while characters with names like Fox Man and Arapaki (“Little Black Man”) traverse semi-deserted landscapes speaking in a plethora of tongues —Greek, English, Italian, Spanish, French—alternating between them without clear reason. It doesn’t get weirder than that.
Genre cinema, especially when it defies conventions, is another aspect of the weird. Lovers Beyond Time ( 1990), by Dimitris Panayiotatos—a famous makers of Greek fantasies—is a love story and also mind-bending time travel sci-fi. Add in the mix orgasms from other dimensions, a threesome of a man with the same woman from two different time periods, and more unpredictable twists and you have a truly strange erotic mystery that also serves as a heartfelt treatise on love. It is also one of the few movies discussed here that are available in North America.
Weird movies can also be trashy. Panos Koutras’ The Attack of the Giant Moussaka (1999) is a perfect example of Greek camp. A subversive queer narrative that nods equally to Pedro Almodovar and American z- movies, this tale follows a mutated piece of giant moussaka spreading disaster throughout Athens, while parodying the mummified Greece of the past and archetypes of the traditional nuclear family. The colossal food isn’t there just for laughs. Its attack becomes a truly transgressive, and a catalyst for something akin to social change in the end.
Lanthimos and contemporaries like Athina Rachel Tsangari didn’t arise spontaneously from nothing; a rich, if obscure, wave of weirdness swept them onto cinema’s shores. Many of these films still await rediscovery and resurrection.