Greece
On the day of her birthday, eleven-year-old Angeliki jumps off the balcony and falls to her death. While the police and Social Services try to discover the reason for this apparent suicide, Angeliki’s family keep insisting that it was an accident. What is the secret that young Angeliki took with her? Why does her family persist in trying to “forget” her and to move on with its life?
On the day of her birthday, eleven-year-old Angeliki jumps off the balcony and falls to her death. While the police and Social Services try to discover the reason for this apparent suicide, Angeliki’s family keep insisting that it was an accident. What is the secret that young Angeliki took with her? Why does her family persist in trying to “forget” her and to move on with its life?
Director's Statement
Athens 2013. Somewhere near the city center. Colored apartment blocks create a grey world. The quiet of an unbearable daily routine is broken by the suicide of an eleven-year-old girl. What could possibly drive a child to decide that she no longer wants to live? And why did nobody know her truth? This girl, like a symbol of many modern-day children who are forced to submit to the rules of a harsh, hopeless society, proceeds to lay bare and reveal every kind of possible exploitation and manipulation carried out in a system which some people still call a family. The Father, as the leader, commands and defines the way the family functions through ways which are not much different to those used to manipulate society. The rest of the family members are victims that can no longer function with rules other than the ones they have been raised with. I always wonder who has the power: the one who strikes or the one who feels the pain? The harshest violence is that of silence. Of the unspoken. Of the regularity that covers up every emotional void created by the exercise of power.