Estabulable Corfu … madness! – THE NEWS

« Running » I thought before I got into the room to see a Greek music documentary on a group whose existence I was completely ignorant of; Hydro. From saturated hydrocarbons. And that by watching the « Here they talk about worship » (Greece, 2024) By Byron Kritzas, I stayed … railing. « They came from Corfu and made Athens a jerk » we hear at some point in the film and it may have been that way, there in nineties, if not all of Athens, at least its music scene. People who talk about them today say that you never knew what to expect from Kore. Hydro. And that their mimicry in live was so out of place and time that it was finally arousing. For example, the « leader » of the band, Pantelis Dimitriadis, a tall ascetic guy, a junction of Jesus Christ – Averell Dalton, with giggling eyes and kele, you think (literally) has fallen to Earth from another planet. No one ever learned why he was going naked in the middle of the middle and above like Ing Pop, but certainly no one ever asked him to do it. Paleokastritsa’s Igie Pop … Kritzas loves Kore. Hydro., This is clear. But it doesn’t caress them. Without exactly how he knows how, he is trying to explain this phenomenon, but you are also saying this, because it is clear that it never gets the whole matter seriously, like Kore. Hydro. They might never take themselves seriously. On the contrary, « here they talk about worship » has some scenes so genuine comic that I fell under laughter. The film’s directorial freedom and « madness » (Kritzas does not declare a director) in a strange way reflects the madness of Core themselves. Hydro. And it was the madness that won me over (the film will be screened in Astor Cinema from next Monday).

Cinema that is scarce

In the movie « Maldives » (Greece, 2024), first feature creation by Daniel Bolda (born in Germany, grew up in Athens and studied cinema in Denmark), the central hero, Stelios (Antonis Tsiotsopoulos), is a music teacher « in a » deceitful « musician. He doesn’t go well with anyone – not even with himself. He even misunderstood the benevolent jokes made by his only « friend » (Drosos Skotis), who, unjustly, is constantly expanding. The only exception is his dog, Maria, so when the latter mysteriously disappears he loses the earth under his feet. The « Malves », of course, are utopia, the dream that we all have deep within us and that « eats » our souls every day but we will never make a reality, either because we do not have time or because we are afraid. And when we finally decide that it’s time for our Maldives, what do we see? That time has rolled. Bolda controls his subject well and dares to « decorate » it with a note of metaphysics that transfers the film to another dimension, even flirting with the kind of thriller (without ever becoming purely thriller). Also, filmmaking, the « Malves » have a sense of nostalgia, referring to a cinema that no longer exists or, if any, rarely. The black and white film conveyed me for a while in the early years of Jim Jarmus, the feeling that the film generally leaves you with is the very well -organized handmade creation that never loses its atmosphere. You do not easily classify it into a particular « species » and you certainly do not go over it.

Two biographies

With ‘Saint-Exupery’ (France/Belgium, 2024) Argentine director Pablo Aguero honors the great French writer Antoine de Sent-Experi (Louis Garel), « illuminating » his action as a pilot of the postal service, when he worked in the 1920s. Minimalist production, with just three basic faces, the film without being purely biographical deals mainly with the attempt by St-Experi to find his friend and colleague Giyome (Vensan Cassel) when traces of the latter are lost during a difficult weather. The hassle of this journey shaped the author’s character and later led him to convey his experiences on paper and become known worldwide with works such as the « Little Prince » and « Night Flight ».

The ‘Niki’ (France/Belgium, 2024) by Celine Salet concerns the unstable life of Nicky de Saint -Fal (Charlotte Le Bon), an American aspiring actress and model, who moved to France with her husband and young daughter, aiming for a freer life. Although De Saint Fal finally experienced success as an artist, painter, sculptor and director, her « journey » in the film is just as tiring as the fatigue she apparently suffered until she did. The constant patriarchal « whipping » in combination with its inner struggle touches the boundaries of despair.

Waste of murder x 2

Saying cleverly and then shooting the one you have told them no longer tells me absolutely anything and unfortunately is the characteristic not of one but two American films so similar that if one did not play Bill Murray and Ed Harris you would not be sure. One, the one with Murray and Harris in the roles of assassins, is said ‘All the soy’ (Riff Raff, 2024) and directed by Dito Montiel of « Tarantino School ». The other is called ‘Psychic’ (Borderline, 2024) and directed by Jimmy Warden starring Ray Nicholson (son of Jack Nicholson). In both films you will lose count in the corpses, and you will not find a trace of logic in scenarios that do nothing but reproduce this unthinkable worship of the pistol culture with scenes of murder after jokes.

Three (still) documentary

A look at the work of artist Artemis Alkalai is attempted by Annetta Papathanasiou in ‘Art of memory’ (Greece, 2025). At first you can imagine that this is a biography of the artist, but you soon realize that the film is interested in illuminating a specific part of her work, the one that helped her process the collective trauma and memory of the Holocaust. The camera watches her as she talks to Holocaust survivors and in her own way she hugs her while she embraces these people. A documentary source and very decent.

Two one -hour documentaries by Claus Bredenbrook and Pagonis Pagonakis honor Dr. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968 and are displayed exclusively in the studio room. It is about « Martin Luther King – a state crime » focusing on how much US murder has influenced US public opinion ‘4 dead in Ohio – an American nightmare’ returning to the tragic episodes of protest at the University of Ohio that resulted in the deaths of four students.

Are also shown

« Popeya the murderer » (Popeye the Slayer Man, USA, 2024). Splatter version of the famous hero with Jason Robert Stevens, directed by Robert Michael Ryan. ‘A Minecraft movie’ (A Minecraft Movie, USA, 2025) by Jared Hes, live-action transfer of first-time video game sales, with Jason Momoa, Jack Black and more.