Magnetic Fields

Winner of five Hellenic Academy Awards for Best Film, Best First-Time Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Original Score, Yorgos Goussis’ wonderful road movie is generous, funny, beautifully constructed, and marvellously acted. Elena (award-winner Elena Topalidou), a married dancer re-evaluating her life, encounters the bearish Antonis (Antonis Tsiotsiopoulos), whose car has broken down on their ferry to Kefalonia in western Greece. He is looking to deposit the remains of his aunt in the island’s cemetery. She offers him a lift. Cue a very cinematic—moments of pure visual poetry and pure visual drama abound—and a very humanistic inquiry into connection, the randomness of life, hurt people, desire, and friendship (with desire). That the film is 100% improvised—Topalidou and Tsiotsiopoulos are credited as co-screenwriters, alongside director Goussis—accounts for the warm feel of this low-budget gem. Bravo for a film that became an unexpected box-office smash in Greece!