I Love Greece: a film far from clichés with Vincent Dedienne and Stacy Martin – Actus…

Set sail for Athens and the Cyclades with the film by Nafsika Guerry-Karamaounas, I Love Greece.

Led by Vincent Dedienne and Stacy Martin, this dramatic comedy follows Jean and Marina, a Franco-Greek couple, who leave for Athens for the summer holidays. There they find Marina’s family and a Greece in crisis. While they plan to spend a few romantic days on Sifnos, an island in the Cyclades, the whole family decides to accompany them. Nothing will go as planned under the fires of Attica…

A Greece far from clichés

Far from the usual clichés about Greece, the feature film shows the gap that now exists between expatriates and Greeks who have remained in Athens despite the crisis. On the edge of the abyss, the latter are forced to sell their house, very often to foreigners who have come to make “good deals”.

Greek-Swiss director Nafsika Guerry-Karamaounas wanted to show how the crisis is impacting the lives of residents.

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She explains in the film’s press kit, “On reuniting with her family, Marina is torn between the powerful desire to reconnect with her roots and the guilt of not being able to help her family. Everything she proposes is disproportionate and inappropriate.

She only takes into account the destitution of her parents, forced to sell their house in Athens, without admitting that they may see it as an opportunity to start a new part of life bringing new things. She stays attached to the walls“.

If the film begins in Athens, the rest of the action takes place in the Cyclades archipelago, and more precisely on the island of Sifnos. Here again the family has to face the crisis: the water is rationed on the island and the swimming pool of the villa is empty. If the scene is laughable in the feature film thanks to the humor of Vincent Dedienne, it reflects another reality: the drought and the lack of unsalted water.

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Nafsika Guerry-Karamaounas did not choose this island by chance. She wanted to feel confident for her first production, and decided to shoot her film in a relationship that was familiar to her.

“As a child, during the summer, I invented stories there; bigger, it seems to me that the elements – the wind, very strong, the sun, violent, the sea – have shaped my gaze. I wanted to pose my camera in this nature that I deeply love. Also, with this film, I wanted to give value to the tiny, to the detail, to the “mini nothings” that make up life, everyday.”

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Nana Mouskouri at the casting

Apart from Stacy Martin and Vincent Dedienne, the cast of the film is also made up of Greek actors: Maria Apostolaka, Panagos Ioakeims, Vanna Karamaounas or Stelios Mainas. We also briefly see the singer of Greek origin Nana Mouskouri at the beginning of the movie.

The director explains:She is the godmother of the film. She rocked my childhood and continues to rock that of my daughters. She is Greek but sings in all languages. Beyond Greece, he is a figure of the world. Once again, we come back to the transgenerational relationships that I hold so dear: old people are trees from which we must learn.”

It was important for Nafsika Guerry-Karamaounas that the two main characters of her film be credible and know Greece and its culture.

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So she made Stacy Martin and Vincent Dedienne take cooking lessons, language lessons and dance lessons.

An important course for Stacy Martin because, during a wedding, her character performs the Zeïbekiko, also called the eagle dance. Usually danced by men to Rebetiko music, Zeibekiko was invented at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a dance with arrhythmic steps that “heals the soul”.

Far from clichés, I Love Greece takes you to a Greece in crisis, arid, believable but full of charm, heart and love.

The film is to be discovered in theaters from this Wednesday, July 6.