The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
Thessaloniki International Film Festival, born in 1960, is the oldest and most international film event in Greece and the entire southern European region. Last year, due to the epidemic, the film festival could not be held as usual. This year, the epidemic has slowed down, and the 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival has been able to start as scheduled on November 4, opening with the French film "Happening", which won the Golden Lion Award at this year's Venice Film Festival, and the closing film that will appear on November 14, "paris, 13th district", also from France.
At this year's film festival, as many as 35 local Greek films will be exhibited or participated, and works such as "Wandering Artist" by the late Greek film master Angelopoulos will also be featured in special screenings. However, at the beginning of the opening of the film show, a new Greek film called "Echoes of the Past" has caused a lot of controversy, and the two sides with different views even intend to go to court, so that the outside world cannot help but be curious about this new film.
Poster of Echoes of the Past
Echoes of the Past is directed by Nicholas dimitropoulos, born in Athens in 1976, and written by Greek film newcomer Dimitrios Katsantonis. Because the film starred Swedish national treasure actor Max von Schodorf, or his last film before his death in March last year, it was quite interesting as early as the production stage. But the key to the controversy that Echoes of the Past is now erupting is the greek history it presents.
Echoes of the Past was max von Sudov's last film.
In December 1943, during World War II, the 117th Wehrmacht Hunting Division entered the mountains of the northwestern Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece to carry out Operation Kalavryta," which was aimed at eliminating Greek guerrillas operating around the town of Calavrita. The brutal German purge infuriated the guerrillas, who on December 7 shot a group of German soldiers who had been captured earlier, and only two of the 81 German soldiers survived, bringing the news back to the headquarters of the 117th Hunting Division.
On 10 December, the German general Karl von le suire ordered a "severe crackdown" on the small town of Calafritta, i.e., the killing of all men in the town. Three days later, in the early morning, several Wehrmacht troops gathered in the town, concentrating thousands of townspeople in a schoolhouse. They then took all the men over the age of 14 to a hillside outside the town and shot them en masse. In the end, 438 people were killed on the spot, and only 13 men escaped by being covered by the bodies of others.
Subsequently, the Nazis set fire to the primary school buildings where about 1,300 women and children were held. There are different versions of what happened at this time. One view is that an Austrian soldier in the Wehrmacht boldly opened the school gates and released innocent women and children, but he himself was shot on the spot by the commander. Another theory is that these women escaped entirely on their own, and definitely not by the conscience of the so-called invaders. In short, after the massacre, which is called the "Caravritha Massacre" in Greek history books, a total of 693 people were killed in the town and more than a thousand houses were burned to the ground.
Stills from Echoes of the Past
After the war, the German government acknowledged the "Caraverita Massacre" and built facilities such as orphanages in the town, hoping to make up for it to some extent, but Colonel Albert Berg and Captain Donat, who were responsible for carrying out the massacre plan, were not punished by any law. Today, holocaust memorials have long been built in the town, and solemn ceremonies are held every December to mourn the dead.
In the film Echoes of the Past, Max von Sudov plays a survivor of the small town of Calafritta, a visit by a lawyer who breaks the quiet of his later life. The lawyer represents the German government and is responsible for coming to collect evidence in response to the compensation claims made by greek orphans. It was in the survivor's recollection that the good deeds of the Austrian soldier, discovered by the conscience, were mentioned. The film seems to be trying to show that history is not black and white, and the Nazis are not all human beings.
This interpretation naturally attracted the strong protests of many locals in Calafritta. Charilaos ermedis, president of the Association of Caravrita Holocaust Survivors, said in an interview with the Greek media "Peloponnese" that as early as the preparation stage of "Echoes of the Past", the association solemnly warned them that the film must respect the dead and their descendants, and must not take this kind of wild historical barnyard found by the conscience of the so-called good Nazis as a fact. As a result, the producers insisted on going their own way, so the association has decided to take the film to court and accuse them of distorting history.
However, the producers obviously did not buy it, and Kazantonis, who is also a screenwriter and producer, was interviewed by the "Variety" bastard, laughing that the other party's threat of lawsuit is just "a hollow cannon battle that will expose the true face in a short time, because there is no legal basis for such a lawsuit."
Although he is a newcomer in the film industry, the screenwriter's experience is not simple. Before graduating from the Mett Film School in 2010, Kazantonis worked as a lawyer in the UK for a while and seemed particularly confident in the lawsuit. Moreover, he stressed that Echoes of the Past never showed that the film was a "feature film based on real events", and that from the beginning of the project, it was said that it would be a "feature film inspired by real events". Although the two statements are only a few words apart, they are very different.
Director Dimitlopros revealed in an interview with Variety that he decided to shoot the film with only one purpose, that is, to remind the world of the pain brought to the Greeks by the Nazis and to ensure that fascism full of evil and hatred will never be resurrected. "Human beings always like to repeat history, but we still hope that through education, we can try to avoid such mistakes being repeated."
As for the Nazi soldiers at the heart of the controversy, there was an earlier special exhibition on the Caravrita Massacre at the Holocaust Memorial Hall in Washington, D.C., which listed fourteen witnesses, all of which could prove that an Austrian soldier opened the door of the school building and released some of the women and children who were trapped by the flames. "We wrote this scene to show that even in the darkest moments, there can be a shining side of humanity, even if it is only a person's conscience." 」 Director Dimitlopros explains.
Echoes of the Past will premiere worldwide at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival on November 6 local time and will be released throughout Greece from November 11.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang