Greek filmmaker Alexis Alexiou arrives at the Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival with his third feature, “Sea of Glass,” fresh off its premiere out of competition at Edinburgh. The moody, noir-infused drama will have a special screening in Thessaloniki before a limited theatrical release across Greece on Nov. 12.
Best known for the Tribeca-premiering “Wednesday 04:45” — a sleek, Athens-set crime thriller that wore its debt to Michael Mann on its neon-infused sleeve — Alexiou’s latest unfolds in the off-season at a down-at-the-heels resort town on the island of Evia, an atmospheric locale for what he describes as a “country gothic noir.”
Booking a room at a shabby resort on the outskirts of Chalkida, the capital of Evia, she meets Vicky, played by newcomer Christiana Matelska Toka, a tough-as-nails twentysomething who runs the family business while looking after her alcoholic father (Michalis Iatropoulos). When his bullying nature turns violent one night, Vangelio steps in to protect the young woman, setting the stage for a stormy confrontation — and an eventual flight for liberation.
“Sea of Glass” is written by Alexiou and Afroditi Nikolaidou and produced by Greece’s Tugo Tugo Prods. in co-production with Portokal (Bulgaria) and Bark Like a Cat Films (Cyprus), and in collaboration with Felony Film (Cyprus), Marni Films (Greece), Jungle Films (Greece) and Cinnerent (Serbia). Alongside the main stars, it features Nikos Georgakis (“Truants”), Thanos Tokakis (“Tokakis or What’s My Name”) and Dimitris Tzoumakis (“Wednesday 04:45”). Simon Sarketzis (“Little England,” “Behind The Haystacks”) served as cinematographer.
They find it in the most unlikely of places. “There’s absolutely nothing interesting about a petit bourgeois seaside resort in Evia,” says Nikolaidou, who grew up frequenting her family’s vacation home in just such a resort town. “You’d only ever wind up there by accident, because you couldn’t find a room or a table anywhere else, or because your grandmother was prescribed a seaside holiday.”
Still, those seaside towns have a “secret side,” she says — one that makes for an ideal backdrop for a noir-infused crime drama.
“These smalltown resorts, just like the rest of invisible Greece, were places of brutality: girls being locked up in seaside flats in the height of summer so men couldn’t get their hands on them, or constrained to local taverns, serving middle-class Athenian holidaymakers,” Nikolaidou says. “These small seaside resorts…haven’t changed much since then. And ‘Sea of Glass’ bears the memories and scars of this hibernating world.”
“In the end, nature has its own will,” he says, drawing a parallel with his film’s young heroine, whose defiant nature refuses to be tamed. “It will come back and fight.”
The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Nov. 5 – 15.
