Kalavryta. December 1943. Devastation; the entire male population over the age of 14 is executed; every house in town is torched and burned down. This was done in retribution, according to the Germans, for the killing of 80 Wehrmacht soldiers by the partisans. Only mothers were left behind, and their small children. Children who are now senior citizens. It’s not only the memory of blood and ruin that haunts them. It’s the questions that cast a heavy shadow upon them. Could the slaughter have been avoided if the partisans had not killed the Germans? What does the word “retribution” mean? Or the word “desolation”? Why us? More than a historical documentary about an atrocity, the film is a collective portrait of the survivors, struggling for the last 70 years to figure out who they really are and what has happened to them. |