Reconstruction

After years as a migrant worker in Germany, a man returns to his village in Greece. Soon after, his wife and her lover murder him and bury him in the garden, pretending he left for Germany again. They travel to Ioannina to fake his hotel check-in. But the man’s sudden disappearance raises suspicions, drawing the police and journalists, who reconstruct the crime to uncover the truth.

The film is considered a landmark of the New Greek Cinema, being the first Greek film to introduce a different, non-linear mode of narration. It received high critical acclaim; however, it did not immediately become well known abroad, apart from its positive reception at the Berlin Festival. It is based on a real incident, which the director elevates by linking it to the myths of the Atreidae and Clytemnestra. The incident took place in April 1968 in the village of Polyneri in Thesprotia. The trial was held in Corfu, where Angelopoulos went to study the case file before writing his screenplay. Among the journalists appearing in the film are the director himself, as well as the then young Tonis Lykouresis, who later became his colleague. Toula Stathopoulou makes her cinematic debut here. With 12,869 tickets sold, the film ranked 83rd out of 87 Greek films released during that season.