Argyris Papadimitropoulos, co-director of IFFR opener Wasted Youth
, says it's an exciting time to be making films in Greece right now, despite the crisis. By Edward Lawrenson.
“It’s a movie that’s shot today, about today.” So says Argyris Papadimitropoulos of Wasted Youth, the film he co-directed with Jan Vogel and that opened the IFFR last night. It’s an apt remark. Filmed last year in Athens, Papadimitropoulos and Vogel, who had worked together on commercials, had the idea to make a film about the aftermath of Greece’s economic crisis in June 2010. A month later, they had started production on a mostly improvised drama about two characters over the course of a summer’s day in present-day Athens: 16-year-old, happy-go-lucky skater Harris (Harris Markou) and middle-aged policeman Vasilis (Ieronimos Kaletsanos), who is juggling an unhappy home life and worries about the ongoing financial crisis.
“We never wrote it,” explains Papadimitropoulos, speaking ahead of the film’s world premiere. “Jan and I rented an office in the centre of Athens. We started interviewing teenagers, thinking of ideas, making a mood board with pictures we took. It was really fast. We decided: no script, just a clear storyline about these two central characters.”
“We didn’t go to state funders or big distributors”, he says about the fast turnaround between initial idea and production. “We didn’t want anyone to have a say on the film, except for me and Jan.” Papadimitropoulos recalls how the budget (around €200,000) came together: “I went for advice to one of my best friends, George Karnavas, who is a general manager for a big production company. He said, ‘This film has to be done. Give me a week’, and managed to find some brave people in Greece to back the film.”
Finding Harris Markou, the charismatic young man who plays the lead teenager, was key to the film. “We asked some older skater guys, and they suggested him, because he’s very outgoing and funny,” says Papadimitropoulos: “We pretty much followed him: his life informs the story.”
“Jan and I are young”, says 34-year-old Papadimitropoulos, “but to teenagers, everyone is old. So we had to win their trust.” He joined Harris and his pals when they went skating, but admits to almost breaking his leg: “I’m a really lousy skater. But I’m good at partying, which is another thing teenagers love.”
The relationship between real life and the fictional world of the film became blurred in other ways too. The wedding that Harris and his pals drunkenly crash was a real ceremony, held for Papadimitropoulos’ brother. That evening’s shoot remains Papadimitropoulos’ highlight of the production. “My brother’s wedding was a fantastic moment, it was a real wedding. I asked the whole crew to dress smartly like they were shooting a video. I told my parents that the kids were going to come in with their skates and they were going to ruin it a bit. But the grown-ups really enjoyed it in the end.”
For Papadimitropoulos’ professional cast, the improvised approach was initially daunting. “I remember Ieronimos getting really pissed off at the beginning,” recalls Papadimitropoulos about his lead man. “He was asking, ‘what do I do now?’ I was asking him, ‘Should I tell you what to do?’, then he said, ‘Yeah, that’s what directors do’, and it was very stressful for him.”
Once shooting got underway, Papadimitropoulos continues, Kaletsanos and other established actors really enjoyed the process – especially working with the young non-professionals. Kaletsanos gives a strong performance, withdrawn and taciturn, desperately troubled by the climate of economic uncertainty. This sense of profound worry is a key feature of Wasted Youth: “Many people have suffered, they’ve lost their jobs,’ says Papadimitropoulos. “But the most important thing is the psychological impact, people are really scared living under the breath of fear; fear stops people from doing things.”
Talking a day after his countryman Giorgos Lanthimos received a foreign-language Oscar nomination for Dogtooth (produced by Athina Rachael Tsangari, whose Attenberg is also playing in IFFR), Papadimitropoulos is positive about filmmaking in Greece right now. “It’s really the best era for Greek cinema right now. There are lots of people of my generation and we’re doing stuff all the time,” he says, noting he was associate producer on Syllas Tzoumerkas’ 2010 film Homeland, and that Tzoumerkas repaid the favour by playing Vasilis’ colleague in Wasted Youth.
“Financially, things are difficult”, says Papadimitropoulos, “so we can only do it this way. It’s very exciting because you do things on the spot. When there’s no money to be given, you don’t have to wait for it – I don’t spend three years in the queue at the Greek Film Center; I should go there and shoot that.”
More on Wasted Youth.