Wasted Youth (2011)
Directors: Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Jan Vogel
Actors: Haris Markou, Ieronymos Kaletsanos, Arthouros Kiviliov
Runtime: 122 min
Two parallel stories are developed in the course of one day in the streets of Athens, capital of Greece, which is deeply shaken by the world financial crisis and the economic collapse of the country that can be felt at every step, and in every conversation. Harris is a teenager who hangs around with friends, skateboards, goes to parties, drinks and chases girls, and all that is, of course, more important to him than finding a summer job. Vasilis is a middle-aged cop frustrated by the world he lives in. He fails to provide an additional source of income for his family, alienates from his wife, has very poor communication with daughter, and his boss makes him work three night shifts in a row. From the beginning, it is clear that these two stories will intersect at some point and it will not turn out well.
This is not a story of a wasted youth, this is a story about wasted youths – Harris’ youth, his girlfriend’s, his father’s, his friends’, Vasilis’ youth, his wife’s and daughter’s, his mother’s, his colleagues’. Wasted youths and lives of millions of people not only in Greece but worldwide, the vast majority that spend their lives in a spasm of an uncertain tomorrow, people who have no chance in a society that presents itself as a “society of opportunities.” This movie is inspired by an actual event, which took place in Athens in December 2008 when a police officer killed a 15-year-old teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos with several shots to the chest. This ignited the huge eruption of popular outrage and riots that lasted for several weeks, spreading out from Athens and many other cities, and marked the beginning of the social turmoil that is still going on in Greece.
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