The Wretches Are Still Singing

Plot

The director studied the transformation of social values using the example of a group of five friends who meet after a long separation and share with each other the details of their difficult lives. The film became the symbol of the 1950s generation and reflected his personal views on the problem of alienation in the modern world. The film was shot in a surreal way with a predilection for the aesthetics of the Marquis de Sade. In it, for the first time in Nikolaidis' filmography, one can see the characteristic elements of film noir which became part and parcel of Nikolaidis' unique approach in the majority of the films that followed. The film follows four men who had been adolescents in the 1950s and are now in their forties. A fifth person, a woman, who has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals due to unspecified disorders, also appears. Efi Papazachariou, who wrote an article about it in World Film Locations: Athens, stated that it is "one of the most unconventional Greek films."

Accolades

The film won the Best Director Award and the Athens Film Critics Association Best Picture Award at the Thessaloniki Festival of Greek Cinema in September 1979, where, furthermore, Hristos Valavanidis won the Best Actor Award, Marinos Athanasopoulos won the Best Sound Recordist Award, and Andreas Andreadakis won the Best Editor Award.

Cast