ETERNITY AND A DAY
MIA AIWNIOTHTA KAI MIA MERA
L'ETERNITE ET UN JOUR



Greece-France-Italy, 1998, 134 min, color

Alexander lives in his old seaside family home near Thessaloniki, but his daughter plans to sell the house slightly damaged by an earthquake. Seriously ill, Alexander thinks if he checks himself into the hospital, he'll never check out. He works on the last unfinished work of a 19th-century poet, but he puts that aside in order to find a home for his dog. After rescuing an Albanian boy from a gang that sells children to wealthy Greeks, he intends to return the youth to his grandmother. The old man and the boy set forth on a journey and meet the 19th-century poet.

"This is a film about a man on the last day of his life. Gian-Maria Volonte died while we were shooting "Ulysses' Gaze" in Bosnia - in Mostar, after which we crossed the frontier to Split. That was his last day, and his last journey."

"With its award Cannes competition jury voted for an increasingly unfashionable (and therefore increasingly important) type of cinema - film with a powerful intellectual and philosophical drive, with his imaginative roots in the classical tradition, at once national and pan-European."