Greek filmmaker Elina Psykou (“Stray Bodies”) has attached a trio of Hellenic heavyweights to the cast of “Patrimonial Fears and Other Illusions,” which will head to the Venice Gap-Financing Market taking place from Sept. 4 – 6. A portrait of intergenerational trauma set against a famous magician’s visit to Athens, the film has bolstered its cast with Greek screen legend Xenia Kalogeropoulou (“Before Midnight”), whose career has spanned six decades; Locarno best actor winner Antonis Kafetzopoulos (“Plato’s Academy”); and Hellenic Film Academy Award winner Makis Papadimitriou (“Suntan,” “Chevalier”). Written and directed by Psykou, “Patrimonial Fears and Other Illusions” follows three women from the same family who finally decide to confront their fears.
An elderly retiree, who’s just killed her abusive husband, dreams of taking a plane for the first time in her life to fly away to Hawaii. A one-eyed performer returns to her Gorilla Girl persona while struggling to remember how she lost her eye. And a Bulgarian immigrant flees her marriage in search of an abortion.
As the magician prepares an elaborate feat that will make the Acropolis seemingly vanish, the three women will likewise attempt the impossible, daring to discover surreal ways to make the family’s dark past disappear before it can haunt the next generation. Psykou’s last film, “Stray Bodies,” a documentary that follows women forced to cross E.U. borders to access medical procedures outlawed in their own countries, premiered at CPH:DOX in 2023. Her sophomore feature, “Son of Sofia,” won the best international narrative award at Tribeca in 2017.
With “Patrimonial Fears,” she might be embarking on her most personal journey yet. How do you raise children without fear, lies and violence? And how do you avoid teaching them to be afraid?
How do you raise a child without cultivating fear of the unknown, fear of otherness, failure, abandonment, change, separation and death? The fear of unemployment, hunger, natural disasters, climate change, wars and epidemics? The fear of foreigners, refugees or immigrants?” she continued.
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