Happy Day

Winner of the Best Film, Best Director, and the Greek Film Critics awards at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Pantelis Voulgaris’s powerful, absurdist drama, set amongst the political detainees of an island prison camp, is adapted from a novel by Andreas Frangias; Voulgaris had himself been arrested and held in an island prison in the early 1970s, during Greece’s military dictatorship. “Voulgaris’s masterpiece has a fiercely ironic title . . . On a wind-swept, sun-scorched, arid island, the control of the authorities over the prisoners seems to be total; they even, as one says, ‘hold sway over dreams.’ But one prisoner refuses to submit to their brutal regime, and will not sign the ‘Declaration of Repentance.’ Trying to maintain calm in preparation for the visit of ‘The Great Mother,’ the authorities pretend the recalcitrant prisoner has committed suicide, but he has really escaped and is hiding out on the island . . . Voulgaris orchestrates Happy Day with masterful precision” (Cinematheque Ontario). “Visually dazzling” (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune). Colour, 35mm, in Greek with English subtitles. 105 mins.