12-year-old Dimitris rides motocross in the old mines where his grandfather once worked. Giannis, 20, drives a huge garbage truck through tight spaces like a cat alleys of the country and he can’t wait for the tourists to leave so he can go out on the green pastures of the Rhine again with his sheep. George collects sea salt from the rocks on his donkey, and the chicken coop is Lisa’s kingdom. IN mouthhis last countryside Mykonoslife flows slowly and gently. Yes, the antipode of Mykonos is located in Mykonos itself.

Here’s what the director and artist wanted to show Eliana Abravanel With “Myconian pastoral”which premiered Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival: the other side of Mykonos, one that has been compressed but still exists and excites her, reminding her of the island she once fell in love with. She was a teenager when she first arrived in Mykonos, on her first vacation without her parents. The feeling of absolute freedom, combined with the wild beauty of the place, captivated her. She began spending summers there, at a farmhouse she rented in Maui in the late 1980s. He had a vegetable garden on the side and goats in the yard. Only one house in the village had a telephone – to get to it, you had to jump over dry stones. As for fruits and vegetables, you bought them from Mrs. Kula, who came every morning with her donkey. At some point, she and her husband built their own house in the same area and began to spend more and more time in Mykonos. For the last six years they have been living on the island for about 6 months of the year.

The last real Mykonians, whose lives Abravanel recounts in her documentary, are the children and grandchildren of the people she met in those early summers, their current neighbors, the ones they sympathize with in the quiet winter months when the noise of the rabid party stops. “It’s strange, but people came to Mykonos to get away from the bustle of the city, to feel the taste of life on the island,” Director K says. “Starting in the 90s, they started bringing the city to the island. There are areas around Chora with very beautiful houses, but one next to the other, you could be in Philothea or Psychiko. If someone had brought you with your eyes closed, you would not have known that you had left Athens.” According to him, “Myconian pastoral” does not show “another Mykonos”, but the real one. In her eyes, Mykonos is “different” and has been mentioned in recent reports.

modern ark

Although the “other” Mykonos is impressive – the island receives more than 1 million visitors and 600 cruise ships a year – Eliana Abravanel leaves it behind the scenes. He only catches his own echo through fleeting shots of speeding trucks. In creating a modern Noah’s Ark, he focuses on the people of Maui, the traditionalists, the farmers, those for whom the most menial work seems great. If time is the opposite of money, then here time has stopped. “These people continue to maintain their daily lives and the slow, human pace of life, even though they are surrounded by the madness of Mykonos.” Although they maintain a relationship with the “other” Mykonos because they depend on it for their livelihood, the cyclone does not carry them away, he said. “They are trying to keep their dignity and sleep peacefully.”