About

Borders are simply divisions, between here and there, between then and now. In this film it is a question of a division between life and death. It's a demarcation line: a dying man, his last days. How do you pass your last day? What can still happen to us? What will we do with the hours that remain? Do you think back on the life you've lived? Or do you allow yourself to drift, expose yourself to all coincidences, follow someone, open a window, meet a new person, open yourself to anything that comes to the unexpected coming-together of the unconnected, which turns out to connect, after all?

Eternity and a Day is an affecting mediation on nostalgia and the passage of life. Alexandre (Bruno Ganz) is a terminally ill poet whose memories are awakening when his daughter reads him a letter penned by his late wife 30 year prior. It invites a succession of reveries that Angelopoulos weaves together seamlessly, allowing the poet to revisit chapters from his life and explore his feelings about family, writing and mortality. As he embarks on a journey to recapture his past, he realises it is a journey from which he will not to return. He rescues a young Albanian refugee who seems to mirrors his spiritual condition and vows to return him to his homeland as a way of ridding himself of the regrets he harbours for his selfish past.

M | Moderate themes