DEBT

In the official trailer for “Debt” you say that it is not a biography of Alekos, but an encomium to friendship from a sinful angel. How did this friendship come about, and how was it nurtured all the way to this film?

The film is indeed not a biography of Alekos. The things usually written in a biography are not even mentioned here. Nor are there interviews with friends and experts. When I talk about DEBT, I like to draw a parallel with Kazantzakis's Zorba, and I hope the comparison with a work of such stature won't be taken as arrogance or sacrilege. The book confines itself to what the author was able to take in and hold on to from their relationship – to what the relationship gave Kazantzakis, and which the author sketches so skilfully. And the way he presents them, they become immortal. How many of the questions we may have about the “real” Alekos when watching DEBT did we have about Zorba when we finished the book? Does his professional career matter at all, or when he died, or whether he did?

The film rests on these principles. It treats Alekos as a literary “hero” and includes some parts of our shared experiences that, fortunately, were filmed. The shared experiences of a relationship that began by chance in 2003, for professional reasons, and which in the years that followed we tended with great love and respect, and it blossomed. I remember our endless trips across the Thessalian plain, which I knew nothing about, on any pretext or excuse. The journey was an end in itself. They were journeys through the geography of the soul. I could never get enough of listening to him – a formidable storyteller and teller of tall tales – telling me passionately about everything he knew or was searching for. Living through unique experiences together and getting to know people. Everything I learned and came to love about the Thessalian plain, I learned through Alekos's eyes.

I won't hide from you that the news that the documentary was being made has stirred eager anticipation among many people here in Larissa, since Alekos's memory, ten years after his loss, remains undimmed. He gave a great deal to our region and formed lifelong friendships. How did you perceive Alekos's relationship with Thessaly, with Larissa, with Karditsa?

You know better than I do who I am talking about. Our Alekos. While he was alive, he was above all his friends and his circles of company. Always generous with his space and available, with his bouzouki and his jokes, he was the soul and the provocateur of the gathering, more often than not an impromptu one. Yet at the same time he was a deeply thoughtful and contemplative man, with incredible sensitivity but also many frustrations. He loved his homeland in a lived, essential way. “I always had the feeling that, by travelling, I was at the same time taking on an obligation far greater than my abilities, one that had to do with revealing the invisible adventure of places through time,” he writes in the introduction to his excellent work IN CHIOS with Anatol de Meibohm. He knew the history of the wider region well through the years – not the official history – which allowed him an essential and conscious relationship with things and people. And for me that was his great charm. But I don't know how much recognition and vindication he received for all this while he was alive...

When will we have the chance to see “Debt” in Larissa? Is anything being planned for the film's life after Opening Nights?

I would be delighted for the film to have a public cinema screening in Larissa. We will in fact schedule it so that I can be present. But an organisation needs to be found that will take full responsibility for staging the event, with the technical capacity required for the projection. The film has no resources and so far has had no official funding of any kind. It relied on the well-known patriotism of the Greeks...

And a piece of good news: Alekos left an unpublished novel, THE CRY OF THE SCOPS OWL, which will soon be published by ESTIA. It is excellent.

And of course there is always his book IN CHIOS with Anatol de Meibohm, published by FARFOULAS.

The film DEBT premieres in the competition section of the Opening Nights Festival in Athens, with 2 open-air summer screenings: Friday 24/09/2021 – 19:45 – RIVIERA; Tuesday 28/09/2021 – 20:00 – GREEK FILM ARCHIVE – LAIS.