23/10/2006

Panos Karkanevatos has not even started filming the first scene of his latest feature and yet the plot of his film is already making waves, at least in his native Greece.

Athanasia – due to start shooting in January on the Greek islands of Karpathos, Rhodes, Nisyros and Tilos, as well as in Toronto – is inspired by the last century’s true-life customs of the mountainous people of Karpathos, an island in Greece’s Southeastern-most corner.

As local tradition has it, a girl, Athanasia, must follow her older sister as part of the dowry offered to the bridegroom. However, she is later banished in disgrace from the village community when her family realizes she is pregnant by that same man. She is found in a terrible state by a Greek-American photographer and follows him to what becomes her home, Canada. Years later, her grown-up daughter Angela decides to look up her real father back in Karpathos.

“Back then, that community had some kind of internal laws, which today may seem violent and inhuman and they are hardly touched upon as they have become some kind of taboo. But they did exist, that’s for sure,” comments Karkanevatos, who likes playing with words – Athanasia is a female name but it also means immortality in Greek.

Karkanevatos’ previous feature films, Borderline (Metechmio, 1993) and Land and Water (Homa ke Nero, 1999) were also inspired by the folklore of Greece’s indigenous people.

A €1.5m co-production with Canada and Holland, Athanasia is also being backed by the Greek Film Center, ERT (Greek public TV) and Odeon.