DIGGER
An aging farmer battling to preserve his way of life finds his hermetic existence upended when his estranged son shows up at his door in this moving and topical Greek drama.
60-something Nikitas (Vangelis Mourikis) is the last bastion of a traditional way of life. Nikitas stubbornly maintains a small, crumbling farm buried deep in the woods that’s under constant threat from a nearby mine that sends frequent mudslides cascading onto his property and unscrupulous company representatives knocking at his door. This principled but lonely life is upended when a young man arrives, introducing himself as Nikitas’s long-estranged son, Johnny (Argyris Pandazaras). An accomplished motorbike rider with a penchant for roving, Johnny at first finds his father’s intransigence frustrating and his temperament impenetrable, but eventually the pair begin to re-establish the father-son bonds. Pulled in opposite directions, Johnny must choose whether to stand alongside his father in fighting for a disappearing way of life or give in to the unfeeling forces of progress. Vividly capturing the solemn beauty of Northern Greece’s wooded landscape with a rain-streaked palette of blues and grays, DIGGER is a timeless story of intergenerational struggle and family ties that seamlessly doubles as a timely allegory for the threat of environmental collapse and cultural erasure.
CAST: Vangelis Mourikis, Argyris Pandazaras, Sofia Kokkali, Theo Alexander
In Competition: First Feature Award
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