For this film, we headed to the ancient seat of democracy to shoot against the backdrop of contemporary political dysfunction. We shot in Athens in May 2019, as the Greek capital prepared for European Parliament elections. The city was in campaign mode and we filmed the modern-day political circus in full swing.
On the streets, crisis-weary Athenians voiced their disillusion with politics as usual. Most had suffered heavily under extreme austerity. They had witnessed collusion between governments and banks. Instead of voting, many preferred to explore alternative forms of democracy, ones more in the spirit of Ancient Athenian traditions.
We filmed this pop-up democracy in action, in spaces squatted by refugees and theatre makers, and in collectives run by their workers. We also had a modern-day Aristotle host a democracy workshop at the foot of the Acropolis, the ghosts of Antiquity all around us.
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The film was co-produced with Belgian production company, Neophileas.
Our core funding for this film came from the Guerrilla Foundation and La Fondation Pour Les Générations Futures.
“I believe democracy is a continuous and definitely not easy process. And a lot of problems are created. Democracy is a very open thing that involves many different people. And, of course, not everyone is happy with every decision.”
“Aristotle would be very puzzled by the way in which a world which is completely oligarchic is calling itself democratic. What we now have, which is oligarchy with elections, would have struck him as the worst combination of the two.”
“The system is very powerful. Just as it has been able to manipulate everything, it has been able to manipulate the notion of democracy itself in order to promote its own ideology. For me, what is tragic in all this, is that it is in democratic terms and through voting that they manage to decide on war, misery, economic crises, and they also turn people into refugees. All within the context of ‘democracy’ and elections.”
“If you give the right to speak and the right to decide to everyday people, it has happened again and again in the world, they come up with excellent choices.”
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