The "Edge of the City" means Menidi, a poor suburb on the edge of pulsating Athens (the city). Menidi harbours many Cosssack Greeks. They are also called "pontios", ethnic Greeks from the Black Sea dispersed through the ex-Southern Soviet Union in the Stalin era. The "pontios" have returned to Greece en masse after the demise of the USSR. The parents speak mostly Greek, but the teenage children speak a hybrid Russian-Greek language which reflects their lack of identity and marginalization in Greece's highly xenophobic society (the only EU country where no minorities exist!...officially). The teenagers' marginalization leads them to the core of the film's theme: the lives of petty crime and prostitution which these second or third class Greeks lead. Their camaraderie, the way they mock each others' dealing in homosexuality, their sexual and criminal exploitation by rich Greeks, their own exploitation of prostitutes, sexual and moral ambiguity all lead to the film's defining!
A group of young "Pontioi" (Greek Russians from the coast of the Black Sea) descend on megalopolis Athens where alienation and poverty leads to petty crime and boredom. Young Sasha, the prince of shantytowns, believes all his misery is transient, a passage to better days of his dreams. The world he and his gang try to conquer "from the edge of the city" soon hits back mercilessly, and their lives crumble, taking along their dreams and ties of camaraderie. Swift camera movements and fast-cut edits heighten the tension in this action drama about growing up on the seamy side of town. Constantine Giannaris won the "Best Director" Award of the 39th International Thessaloniki Film Festival (1998) for his very convincing work with professional and non-professional actors in Apo Tin Akri Tis Polis and the State Film Awards Second Prize for fiction.
Taking as its background a problem which has been endemic in most eastern Mediterranean countries since the collapse of communism, Apo Tin Akri Tis Polis (From The Edge Of The City) tells the violent story of a group of young 'pontioi' - Greeks who grew up on the Black Sea coast in what was once the Soviet Union.
Having relocated to Menidi, a rundown neighbourhood on the western outskirts of Athens, they are determined to challenge the culture to which they belong, but which spurns them as outsiders.
Their leader, Sasha (Stathis Papadopoulos), is more ambitious than the others, but still cannot avoid being drawn into a world of petty crime, drug-dealing and male prostitution in the Omonia Square area of Athens.
This is the first of Greek director Constantinos Giannaris' features to be made in his native Greece. His short films were shown at festivals in the late eighties, but his first two features were made abroad: one in Mexico, followed by 3 Steps To Heaven, which was made in the UK (where it was funded by the British Film Institute), starred Katrin Cartlidge and toured the festival circuit in 1995 after debuting in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes.
Buff and eighteen, Sasha lives with his mother and father in a Kazakhstan immigrant settlement on the outskirts of Athens. At night, he and his teenaged friends rollerblade through the city, where they hang out in brothels and work as male prostitutes. Every day they endure an obstacle course of johns, drug dealers, pimps and gangsters, as they try desperately to survive in a country that is not their own.
http://rapidshare.com/files/286305802/Apo.Tin.Akri.Tis.Polis.1998-SMz.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/286305686/Apo.Tin.Akri.Tis.Polis.1998-SMz.part2.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/286306346/Apo.Tin.Akri.Tis.Polis.1998-SMz.part8.rar
Language: Greek (English & Portuguese subs)
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