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A Blast (2014) |
Το Σάρωμα (original title) |
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Το Σάρωμα (original title) |
Fiction, 83 min |
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drama |
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Plot |
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Maria is running away on the highway. She is alone in her roaring SUV. Behind her, fire and a case full of money. In front of her, the hopeless vastness of the motorway. Her crazy, accelerating course will stop at nothing. Only a day before she was a caring mother, a loving wife, a responsible daughter. Today she has gone rogue: she is determined to sweep away everything she has ever cared for. Maria’s tragic tale of ascent to redemption is narrated through bits of the present that become tangibly interwoven with fragments of the past, creating a dazzling and devastating mural of contemporary Greece. Behind the eternal reign of her average Greek family, lie only wrongly asserted sexuality, lies and debts, which can only be exposed by a blast. Violent as much as honest, A Blast follows uncompromisingly its anti-heroine, as she desperately reclaims the life taken away from her by an envious mother, a mentally challenged but all demanding sister, an absent husband and a hostile country. The comic goes hand in hand with the tragic and a hidden tenderness constantly counterparts the atrocious reality in a Greek tale that is more timely than ever. |
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Producer's Note |
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Following my successful collaboration with Syllas Tzoumerkas on his first feature, Homeland (Venice Critics Week 2010), A Blast is coming as a further step and a deeper look in the topics of the country and the family. Building on Syllas’ strong points, his dynamic and fast paced storytelling as well as the engaging performances captured from his actors,the film has already secured the participation of Aggeliki Papoulia in the leading role as well as an engaging and vibrant soundtrack from Drog_A_Tek. Production-wise we will try to deal as a team with the reality of (producing in) Greece the same way our heroine, Maria, does: disillusioned, determined and inventive even at worst times. Starting with a plan A of traditional production and the support of a well established production company, our team will explore all possibilities and find its own new ways of filmmaking if everything else breaks loose. Presenting the project at CineLink is the first step of this challenging trip.
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Director's Statement |
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Through the story of Maria and her family, A Blast tells the story of a generation’s disillusion; of the generation which got crashed by the collapse of Greek economy and society, right at the moment when it started building a life. The film interweaves two parallel narratives: the one is the narration of the day of the cathartic blast, the day Maria decides to blowher whole life up and find a way out of her personal disappointment and financial dead-end. The second, decodes Maria’s life the last decade: the events, the relationships, the choices that lead her to her present state. Maria, bright and loving in the past, risky and violent in the present, is pushed from a state of carelessness to a state of awareness, as she deals with family drama, with the violent underbelly of a hostile society gradually sinking into panic and chaos, with financial disaster, as well as with her husband’s detachment and her lonesome upbringing of her kids. But most of all, with the impossibility to find help. And inevitably, everything is put to test here: her identity, her ability to love and care, her delights and her value system, her strength and her will to overcome her messes and illusions. A relentless and vibrant camera gaze, focusing on the characters’ intense interaction and motion, and a dramaturgy that mixes drama with black comedy and pure adventure-film elements, follow Maria stripping herself bare naked of all fear, on the road to her own, private ascent to a new sense of self and hope.
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Technical Specifications Image / Sound |
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