Recycling Medea: Not an Opera Ballet Film

Not just a music film. Not just a ballet film. Not just a political film essay. Here, an antique Greek tragedy serves as an astute metaphor for the country's current tragedy. Medea kills her own children. Society has turned against its offspring and thus kills their future. The balletic retelling of a mother murdering her two kids, choreographed by Renato Zanello, is based on Euripides' play and features music by Mikis Theodorakis. Script, sound and dance join forces in a powerful film that reflects the desperation of a society that spent all of yesterday turning its children into those who make up today's lost generation. These protagonists are flanked and contrasted by the disturbingly mild-mannered 15-year-old Bella, the story's innocence incarnate, who is destroyed by the hand of a hostile and selfish world. Against this background, she seems almost unreal; a fictitious character. Certainly no fiction, on the other hand, are the words of Anne Frank, hidden away in her Amsterdam hideout and filling the pages of her diary, who lends today's isolated and trusting Bella her "voice" and thoughts. Medea, Jason, Bella and Anne Frank, composer and protester Theodorakis, the dancers, the rebelling hooded teenagers, advancing police, the choreographer and cameraman - they all become (in)voluntary actors in this complex tragedy spanning the ages. As a film "Medea" is dedicated to the betrayed youth - and their parents who sacrificed the dreams and future of their own children.