Its first half hour Athenafrom his new movie Romain Le Havre, presented on Friday at the Onassis Foundation after the premiere in Venice, is nothing short of sensational. The murder of a young man by the police in the suburbs of Paris causes the usual riot. The police station becomes Madame’s land. Back in the so-called “Athens,” as the growing immigrant community is called, barricades are already in place, flares, Molotov cocktails, and rocks are at hand.

Gavras’ camera follows everything in every possible way: it follows the action, rotates, looks down, or is fixed on the shoulders of the main characters. With continuous mono shots, without “green screens” and special effects. How the hell did he do it?

“Rehearsals like what we do in the theater lasted almost two months, mostly with the main characters. Then about 300 extras joined the ensemble. But the most important thing is the interaction of the actors and the camera, it’s like a dance. Obviously, you need to be very, very prepared before you go to the final shooting, but then again there will be some … happy accidents that you can also use, ”the French director of Greek origin replies about his achievement. He also informs us that behind-the-scenes footage will be released soon, where we can see in detail how these horrible chaos choreographies were filmed.

But in order for Gavras to achieve such a result, while simultaneously approaching such a sensitive topic as police brutality, he needed to have a minimum – or even a maximum – of creative freedom, which it seems the Netflix platform willingly offered him – there since yesterday “Athena ” available.

“The truth is, I have never had so much freedom. It was the only way to make this film. You can’t go into post-production and say, “Let’s re-shoot this,” re-shooting stuff like that isn’t easy. It is bad, of course, that in most countries it will not be shown on the big screen. In France, for example, if you show a film in theaters, you have to wait ten months before it goes on the platform, which is not allowed for Netflix,” he admits.

“Dystopia is here, very realistic – just look at TikTok.”

As we said, police brutality is at the center here: “In a sense, violence is in the DNA of the police. In reality, however, it just hides more serious problems. For example, it is commonly used by insecure governments or in collaboration with extreme right-wing groups that thrive on chaos.”

“Gener8ion”

However, these days Gavras is presenting another project in Athens. The triple video installation “Gener8ion”, created by the director together with the musician and DJ Surkin, has been “walking” for several days (until 23.10) around the exhibition areas of Stegi, as well as in the Mantra of Dionysius. Areopagite. All three installations take us back to 2034, in Athens (“Neo Surf”), Mumbai (“Emotions”) and the USA (“Agartha”) respectively. “I have always loved the idea of ​​connecting past, present and future. What we are doing here is a kind of archeology of the future, as if we are opening up a different perspective for it. Something similar is happening in Athena, the revolution in the near future,” says Romain Gavras.

In “Neo Surf”, set in Athens, a group of teenagers live among poisonous algae, defying the orders of the authorities. “Children are always children. They will do stupid things, try strange drugs, enjoy life. We were not interested in showing the future with evil robots or aliens. After all, the dystopia is already here, very realistic – just look at TikTok.”

On the other hand, in the film Emotions, starring Charlize Theron, a revolutionary 3D printing system produces ultra-realistic replicas of Hollywood actors on behalf of the Indian film industry. In general, control systems are of great interest to Gavras. “The idea of ​​control has been around since the Trojan War. It’s just that in the modern world it is expressed in other, much more complex ways. So these types of systems are more difficult to eliminate.”