Almost two decades after Mourning Rock (Agelastos Petra), the landmark film for the city of Eleusis, Filippos Koutsaftis returns to the same place, which in essence he never left, with a new work, to meet the city’s present. This is the film The Eleusinians Narrate, which will premiere in November 2021 and will mark the close of the programme of Eleusis as European Capital of Culture 2021.

To create this new film, the director picks up the thread of the narratives from the unedited footage shot for Mourning Rock, which was never screened. The digitisation of this material is followed by new filming and interviews with the people of Eleusis today, recording the city’s present. Filippos Koutsaftis seeks out the protagonists of the first film, their paths and their traces through time. Some of them are no longer alive, and their memories are passed on by those who lived with them and know about them. They thus become the links that connect the city’s yesterday with its today and create a continuity between the two films. At the same time, he looks for the protagonists of his new film among new faces of the city.

Over the years in which Filippos Koutsaftis has followed and recorded the life of the city, he has developed a special relationship with the people and the neighbourhood of Synikismos. In this historic neighbourhood, as part of the Synikismos Festival, he presents a video installation drawn from the unedited footage of Mourning Rock. These are real-life recordings of the people who carry the soul of Eleusis, and who invite us to listen to them as we follow the director on the journey of making the film The Eleusinians Narrate.

Interviews with: Panagiotis Farmakis, Georgios Kryonas, Dinos Vasileiou, Isaak Moumpagiatzis, Vasileios Kyrlis, Roula Theologou, Panagiotis Kontolios, Charikleia Kontoliou, Charoula Ilia, Andro Boga, Maria Chrysogonidou, Popi Papangeli, Eleni Lazarou, Vangelis Liapis, Dimitris Theofanakis, Panagiotis Rokas