If you travel through farmland you often see haystacks. They can be domed, square or circular and pleasing to look at, almost artistic. Behind the perfect structure what is hiding?
In “Behind the Haystacks” could it be that the haystack is the public persona and the private person is what hides behind the haystack.
Its time frame is 2015 a time when migrants were storming Greece through Northern Greece and certain islands in the Aegean off the Turkish coast. You’ll hear the radio and the television in several scenes discussing the migrant crisis.
It has been filmed at Lake Dorian with Greece on one side and North Macedonia on the other.
The film begins the way it ends with children running to an outdoor celebration and telling all they have seen two bodies at the edge of Lake Dorian where they were playing.
The film divides itself into three chapters; Stergios the father, Maria the mother and Anastasia the daughter.
Stergios’, (Stathis Stamoulaktos) public persona is a hard-working famer and part time fisherman. But he has in the past cheated on his taxes using manufactured false invoices. He is pinned under a huge debt load.
Maria (Eleni Ouzounido) his wife is a devout church going lady but jealous of those in the church’s volunteer ranks. She lies to the father of the church and to the police to protect her family.
Anastasia (Evgenia Lavda) is a hardworking nurse trainee at a local hospital caught under the thumb of father Stergios and must lie to assert her independence.
In the local patriarchal society Maria jumps to the commands of Stergios and Anastasia is under the vice grip Stergios who on occasion slaps her around.
In the wonderful façade of village life and national existence there are the ugly cross currents of migrants swamping Greece. The majority of the village is suspicious of the migrants as one villager remarks where they come from they are killing each other. Even the village father wants his parishioners not to assist the migrants. Yet on the sly some are assisting the migrants and a few are making very good returns over smuggling migrants over Lake Dorian from North Macedonia into Greece.
There is corruption in the local co-op of grain farmers, migrants are dying trying to cross the lake, lying in the judicial process, setting up an Albanian farmworker for a murder charge let alone a murder being committed.
Perhaps the truest character is Anastasia and her murdered boyfriend Christos and his murder is just but a bit of sordidness behind the haystack.
The director is Asimina Proedrou.
In Greek with English subtitles.
You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfK_LrAcYpE&t=15s.
RKS 2024 Film Rating 87/100.
Screens in the The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024. For more information https://gifft.ca
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