Yannis Economides, a pre-eminent figure of contemporary Greek cinema, explores the deteriorating and desolate world of the nihilistic Greek society through the double life of a contract killer.
By night, Stratos works in a bread factory but by day, he’s a professional hit man. He needs the cash to free Leonidas from prison because he once saved Stratos’ life when he was behind bars. For Stratos, this is simply a question of honour. He attentively looks after a neighbour’s child, eight-year-old Katerina, as well as her mother and an uncle. At last he has enough money for the prison break-out, but an unexpected turn of events takes place, one of them having to do with Katerina’s safety. Stratos must act, even if this means stringing one wrongdoing after another.
»The world I describe in my films has always been in crisis. My characters were in crisis long before the Greek bubble even burst. I didn’t just discover Greece’s societal crisis, or the crisis of the Western World. The themes I’ve always explored, themes of the human condition, of love, hate, betrayal, money-grabbing, meanness, the identity of the neo-Greek, his vices, defects and shortcomings, they’ve always been what I dig into.« (Yannis Economides)
Yannis Economides
Born in 1967 in Limassol, Cyprus. Having studied film in Athens, Economides first made shorts and documentaries. Matchbox, his feature film debut, was released in 2002, and Soul Kicking was selected for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.