About

Everything is shown through the perspective of simple people – the same people who have to bear the effects of these events. The film is a popular epic much more than an analysis of recent Greek history… the story covers the period between the overt dictatorship of a general to the veiled dictatorship of a field marshal, who was viewed by many Greeks, exhausted by all the catastrophes they had experienced before, as a liberator.

The Travelling Players recounts episodes of Greek history between 1939-52, including the declaration of World War II, occupation by Nazi forces, liberation, dictatorship, and the polarising struggle between monarchists, centrists and the country's left-wing and Communist Party that led to the Greek Civil War. Made prior to the restoration of democracy, Angelopoulos's film couples political histories with the myth of Atreides, creating a Brechtian world where one oppressive model of governance replaces another. The film follows an itinerant company of actors as they travel throughout history performing the19th century pastoral melodrama, Golfo, the Shepherdess. Continually interrupted by the events they are drawn into, the performance is never finished and their failure takes on symbolic significance for a country trying to reconcile its past. With The Travelling Players, Angelopoulos established his distinct and austere approach to visual storytelling. The camera tracks and shifts focus imperceptibly through history and space, using only 80 carefully composed sequence shots during its 222 minute duration.

Ages 18+