Returning in Autumn

Colour, 35mm
Czech Republic, 2001, 114 min
Section: Czech Films

Synopsis

Greek director Stavros spent a good deal of his life in the former Czechoslovakia. He became one of more than 3,000 Greek children who were brought to Czechoslovakia in May 1948 as refugees from the civil war raging in their homeland. Stavros now returns to Brno to bring the remains of his grandparents back to their beloved Greece. His return to places he once knew intimately brings on intense memories of the past – of his childhood, first in an orphanage and later with his grandparents who ultimately died in the faraway land where they’d been forced to take refuge. The story is a powerful portrait of a boy’s maturation, influenced by school, friends and first love. No less essential, however, was his difference from those living around him – in spite of the fact that after so many years he acclimatised to his new home. The humorous, touching and sometimes even bizarre events which come to Stavros as he encounters old familiar places powerfully evoke, beyond his personal memories, the difficult era of the 1950s.

About the director

Greek director George Agathonikiadis (b. 1947) spent a substantial portion of his life in the former Czechoslovakia. He graduated from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU) and afterward worked as a director at the Prague and Brno studios of Czechoslovak television. He returned to Greece in 1983 and began working for ERT, a Greek television station. Returning in Autumn is his first feature-length film.