How Low Can You Go? A European Tableau of Self-Abasement and Degradation

The social landscapes emerging from the rich and varied selection of the 38th Athens Panorama of European Cinema bode anything but well.

Oppression, rejection, conditioning, marginalization, and the frantic search for an elsewhere in which to take refuge are only some of the troubled states in which the characters of the twelve competing films find themselves—people who feel themselves, almost without exception, unfit to live in a society that sees them solely as dead weight, sources of disturbance, and unwanted guests.

There is, however, an even more specific thread that, consciously or not, binds all these movies: the protagonists’—women in particular—realization that they have once and for all hit rock bottom, that they have reached the lowest point of a life that had once seemed to throw every possibility wide open before them.

Such is the case of the middle-aged Norwegian teacher—and wife of the city’s mayor—at the center of the murky Don’t Call Me Mama (Se meg, 2025), willing to abase herself without restraint to keep afloat her illicit relationship with a young, hopeful Syrian refugee—and ready to carry out the most terrible and heinous of revenges, once cast aside, rather than plunge into the abyss she has dug beneath her own feet.

Equally bleak is the fate of the spinster in the sarcastic Sorella di clausura (2025), desperately in love with a withered third-rate singer and willing, despite her higher education, to string together an endless series of ever more degrading jobs.

And who knows what will become of the unfortunate Ursula, in the bittersweet Phantoms of July (Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen, 2025)—almost a Céline and Julie Go Boating set in the German countryside—trapped in a purposeless existence cleaning furniture in a shop and serving drinks to the temperamental patrons of a bistro; and who knows whether, as lonely as she is, her friendship with the Iranian YouTuber Neda will truly offer any solace.

Even more devastating is the path of fifteen-year-old Emma in the bleak Silent Rebellion (À bras-le-corps, 2025), the victim of rape in 1940s Switzerland who is denied a future of development and dignity by a repressive, bigoted community—finding in sisterhood, and in trusting her own abilities, the only way out of degradation and the assembly line.

On a somewhat lighter note is the fate of the bewildered eponymous heroine of Smaragda: I Got Thick Skin and I Can’t Jump (2024)—played by a marvelous Niovi Charalambous, a real revelation—who, nearing fifty and long past a brilliant childhood career on television, now writhes live on TikTok made up like a jungle beast and scrapes by as a nanny in a luxury resort, until the discovery of an unexpected pregnancy upends—for better or worse, who can say—the resigned equilibrium she thought she had finally reached.

The topic becomes even more pronounced in the remaining Greek-language titles: In the hilarious Receptions (Dexioseis, 2025), a respected retired journalist, simply to keep a roof over his head, sneaks into the most prestigious buffets to get something to eat, begs for loans from everyone he knows, and reinvents himself as an online troll hurling anonymous insults just to earn a few euros.

We sink even lower with the police officer in the grim Diversion (Ektropi, 2025), reduced to stealing jewelry from the corpses he transports to the morgue in order to cope with a family situation on the brink of collapse.

And what can be said of the would-be adventurers of Little Man-Eater (Mikros anthropofagos, 2025), a group of penniless dreamers setting off in search of a sunken treasure hidden in the depths of the Aegean Sea?

Finally the descent becomes almost literal—even physical—in the two coming-of-age stories in the programme, both from the Czech Republic: In the melancholic The Other Side of Summer (Na druhé strane léta, 2025), a group of young women on the threshold of adulthood dive, in the strictest sense, into a mysterious body of water only to re-emerge who knows where, apparently far from the troubles and traumas of real life; while Broken Voices (Sbormistr, 2025)—our worthy winner—concludes with the image of the soul-crushed main character collapsing to the ground, an unflinching and harrowing depiction of a toxic environment in which morbid hierarchies and abuses of power prevent the choirgirls from realizing just how much, in their determination to appease their predatory master, they are jeopardizing their own innocence.

Andrea Bosco

© FIPRESCI 2025