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BERLINALE 2022 Encounters

Review: The City and the City

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- BERLINALE 2022: Syllas Tsoumerkas' and Christos Passalis' film is a stylistically eclectic mix of documentary, fiction and essay, telling the story of the exterminations of Jews in Thessaloniki

Review: The City and the City

The fourth feature film by Greek director Syllas Tsoumerkas and the directing debut for actor Christos Passalis, The City and the City [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hristos Passalis, Syllas Tz…
film profile
]
, which world-premiered in the Berlinale's Encounters section, is a stylistically eclectic mix of documentary, fiction and essay united by its topic: the extermination of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki.

Before the 1930s, Jews were the dominant community in the city. At the end of the 1920s, the influx of Greek refugees from Minor Asia altered the population structure, and together with the locals, they founded the anti-Semitic EEE - Nationalistic Union Greece. Supported by the prime minister Venizelos and local daily papers, they started persecuting the Jews. Nazi Germany occupied the country in 1941, and by 1943 the Jews were pushed into a ghetto, killed in local concentration camps and sent to Auschwitz. 96% of the 55,000 Jewish inhabitants was exterminated.

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The City and the City is chronological through its six-chapter structure and intertitles that describe the key events. But the film itself constantly switches between different eras and shooting styles. One timeline, mostly filmed in black-and-white, starts in the 1930s and follows a Jewish family whose members are, among others, played by Vassilis Kanakis, Angeliki Papoulia and Niki Papandreou.

Another timeline is Thessaloniki of the present day, upon which events of the 1940s are transposed. An incident from 1942, when 9,000 Jewish men were humiliated for hours by German officers in the Liberty Square, is reconstructed in the same location. But in the first, black-and-white shot, we see this is now a construction site and in the background there is a street with decidedly modern cars and buses. The image then turns to colour, and we witness the abuse in close-up, with strange, blurry shots in which only the person under duress is clearly visible, as bulldozers drive around the actors. The only marks of the period are the costumes.

There are several re-enactments of this kind in the film. When the character played by Kanakis returns from the concentration camp, his sister, played by Papandreou, embraces him on the sidewalk of today's city, in a scene filmed and edited like any modern arthouse picture.

Another section that comes into the film feels the most free-wheeling, and it is hard to tell which era it belongs to. It is also removed from the specific physical space - all other locations are neatly identified and described in narrative titles. At the very end of the film, we learn it's 1983. This could be a sort of memory land: both directors were born in Thessaloniki in 1978, and conceivably this segment represents their memories.

Even though the film can be said to be experimental, and does sometimes veer off into unrecognisable territories, the editing by Yorgos Zafeiris admirably keeps it together. Moreover, it keeps the viewer engaged, at times even feeling a tension in this "dialogue" between the city and the city. Historical facts, some of which are probably surprising even to citizens of Thessaloniki, provide the anchor to which we can fasten the impressions and emotions elicited by the fictionalised parts and re-enactments. The creative camerawork by Simos Sarketzis makes sure that the latter never feel like a TV documentary but rather like memories. In the end, The City and the City is really about the geography of memory and even more about the Thessaloniki of today than that of the past.

The film was co-produced by Athens-based Homemade Films and the Greek National Opera, with the collaboration of Thessaloniki International Film Festival

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