From The Edge Of The City (1998)

From The Edge Of The City (1998) Country: Greece Release Year: 1998 Aka: Apo tin akri tis polis Director: Constantine Giannaris Writer: Constantine Giannaris Language: Greek, Russian Genre: Crime, Drama Runtime: 93 min Cast: Stathis Papadopoulos, Dimitris Papadoulidis Theodora Tzimou, Costas Cotsianidis Studio: Picture This! Entertainment Mythos Ltd. Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181547/ Available on:

The "Edge of the City" means Menidi, a poor suburb on the edge of pulsating Athens (the city). Menidi harbours many Cosssack Greeks. They are also called "pontios", ethnic Greeks from the Black Sea dispersed through the ex-Southern Soviet Union in the Stalin era. The "pontios" have returned to Greece en masse after the demise of the USSR. The parents speak mostly Greek, but the teenage children speak a hybrid Russian-Greek language which reflects their lack of identity and marginalization in Greece's highly xenophobic society (the only EU country where no minorities exist!...officially). The teenagers' marginalization leads them to the core of the film's theme: the lives of petty crime and prostitution which these second or third class Greeks lead. Their camaraderie, the way they mock each others' dealing in homosexuality, their sexual and criminal exploitation by rich Greeks, their own exploitation of prostitutes, sexual and moral ambiguity all lead to the film's defining!