THE WEEPING MEADOW is a film that differs from the previous ones but at the same time contains many of their features. Here we have a linear fictional narration, that is dictated rather by the theme itself. At first I planned on making a single film which would perhaps be entitled TRILOGY and would be based on the Theban cycle, i.e. Oedipus, Seven against Thebes and Antigone. But the running time for such a film was forbidding: it would end up by being over four hours long and this would create problems from a production point of view and perhaps I would even discover gradually that certain things did not have the space to develop within the framework of just one film and were suffocating. A fictional development would help in telling the story but would necessarily change the form. With this rationale my producers and I came up with the idea of an actual trilogy with three separate films, which would also be more in keeping with the meaning of a trilogy as well as the reference to the Theban cycle. The main character in THE WEEPING MEADOW is Eleni: a woman whose life we follow from the moment she arrives from Odessa as a refugee together with another family of Greek refugees and, of course, through this personal story of hers, we also observe, at the same time, the entire historical and political framework of Greece during that period. The character of Eleni is the embodiment of the refugee, the exile, the wandering person, the dispossessed. Eleni, exiled since childhood from Odessa from where she set off. There a family of Greeks found her in the port, crying, alone, without a family, and took her with them. The definition of her existence is that of the person without home and hearth. The person, who, having traversed a century of constant uprooting and having desperately sought a safe haven, experiences this merciless fate. After ETERNITY AND A DAY, the immediately succeeding significant historical moment was the end of the twentieth century. I know because I felt the need to talk about this end of the century or at least to take a look at the whole century. To summarize, in a sense, the century that was ending. Of course there are previous films of mine that, up to a certain point, speak of this century, such as MEGALEXANDROS that begins at the dawn of 1900, or THE SUSPENDED STEP of THE STORK that ponders in the face of its impending end. But also the course, let's say, of Greek history in the twentieth century, has pretty much passed through my films. However, to turn one's camera exclusively on what we would call the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of a woman - the life of a woman who lives through its greatest events and also have as a central theme the exiles of the Greeks, the absence of home, the displacement of people depending on the twists of history was a new challenge. This constant return to the theme of the refugee is I think a profound negotiation with our identity and the knowledge of this identity. A feeling I have is that of the person who is constantly losing his bearings on the way home. A feeling that the well known line in "THE SUSPENDED STEP OF THE STORK" that is later repeated in ULYSSES' GAZE renders perfectly: We've crossed the borders and we're still here. How many borders must we cross in order to go home?' On the other hand I feel that I am constantly doing and redoing an Odyssey with different forms, through different stories that all keep harking back to Homer's Odyssey which is the primordial journey, the first voyage but also the voyage that does not in the end lead one home. Because in reality Ulysses did not remain in Ithaca. Ulysses left again and died homeless somewhere in Aetoloacharnania. So says the myth. The myth has a less happy end than does Homer. The story is one and it repeats itself: exile, the personal story, the attempt at assimilation, the new departure, the flight somewhere. Because there is some reason for every departure. We fail to find the stake. We fail to find balance and we leave again and again. There is a love that in actual fact breaks up a family, breaks up the absolute. The absolute is a challenge as our ancient forbears would say and challenges create traumas. They sow disaster. In this sense THE WEEPING MEADOW is a Greek tragedy. For the needs of this film I moved to Thessaloniki for a long period of time since there were very specific difficulties to be faced as regards the construction of the sets. There was the one set, the refugee village, which was built on Lake Kerkini and the other, still bigger, the refugee settlement in the port of Thessaloniki. The big problem was that very few of what we would call the buildings of that period remain. The Greece of the '30s has almost completely disappeared, not only in the city of Thessaloniki, which still has some extraordinary constructions but which are however grafted with the most contemporary innovations. So it is extremely hard for one to isolate places in which to reconstruct the period of the '30s. But there are no -"period" constructions in rural Greece either. I had gone on location scouting in the Ukraine and then took a trip to the former Soviet Union, crossing into Uzbekistan where I saw the steppe. Almost without realizing it I sought a place in which to build a village where the surrounding area would resemble a steppe and it would be a village in the middle of this wilderness. At first I couldn't accept any of the things that already existed and I really searched extensively. Then there was also this relationship with the river, with water, all these things had to exist in the village I chose, in this "steppe", in this lake-bed that was finally selected, the lake which is empty half the winter. The first scene of the film is in this empty space, the steppe. This village was built from scratch. About one hundred houses with real building materials, with a street plan, with a church, a school, everything. Everything a village would have. By Greek production standards, it is I think the biggest set ever constructed. I had worked previously on altering and transforming the existing space with constructions, which tied in and complemented the natural scenery. And of course one feels wonderful when one sees this whole thing where suddenly it is not just a dead space that has been constructed, a set, but has a life of its own. It was a very special creation of forms and shapes but also of an entire community. Then there was the artistic work, the choice of colors, the lines, the spots you want to stress, to show up and the others you want to leave in the shadow. You have the possibility of doing whatever you like. So this is a wonderful feeling and of course it gave me the opportunity to work on a stage of the production with things I love very much. An even more intense experience was when I did the other set construction in the gulf of Thessaloniki, in the port, an even bigger undertaking than that of Kerkini: almost 200 dwellings that began to be constructed with a very simple plan. Initially it was to be a small refugee neighborhood 50-60 low-lying little houses, and then we began to add more and more until what we ended up with was a terraced construction, which was like an amphitheatre in structure. I felt that very significant work was done on the level of set design which came alive before my eyes when people entered the picture, slept, talked, ran. It was another sensation, equally important, but as wonderful as the first. The first village was swept away - by the water, the water rose, I just managed to shoot the final scene. Now the water has eroded the houses. Only the tree we planted remains. This tree stands in the middle of the water. The church belfry has also remained standing. But in the port it still exists. An ultimatum from the port authorities, however, warned us that we must vacate the area (since we had made an agreement that the space must be emptied as it is valuable for the needs of the port). So, since either way, it would have to be torn down I did what I had been trying to avoid all along despite the fact that it was in the script. A fire that destroys the village, therefore the set as well and gave me the last scene of the film I shoot. Over and above the construction of the sets, which was one of the most difficult things in this film, the other great problem was the actors for the main parts. The two young people, in other words, and most of all the girl who would have to play a role that would cover various ages. When I auditioned the actors I saw very many young girls and very many young boys before I decided on these two kids. When I rehearsed with Alexandra for the first time I wasn't at all sure that she could do the role, she was so innocent, so inexperienced, as yet, that it scared me. Despite all this, her aspect, her appearance, her movement, were so elegantly fashioned, that something drew me especially to this girl. I felt that she was the "one", but I was afraid she might not be able to cope with the role, that she would be unable to meet the demands of the part. In the end it turned out that this girl was transforming in an amazing way. As the shooting progressed she became more and more Eleni. And since the shooting began linearly from the beginning of the film with the first period, ended with the second period and culminated with the finale, this twenty year-old girl with no make-up, with no intervention, with just an internal process, was actually transformed into a woman of almost forty, With absolutely no intervention, with a simple change in hairstyle and that's extraordinary. One could see in her face the transformation that was real and incredible.

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