Behind the Haystacks

On the northern border of Greece a middle aged fisherman, living with his wife and daughter, is drowning in debt. For a heavy fee he begins taking migrants across the border lake. One day something grave befalls the family. What follows is the three of them facing their own dead ends and their own weaknesses. The film does not make people smuggling into material for a thriller; it tells what debt makes a person do. The same events are given from three separate points of view and what each person knows changes. How closely the lives on the two sides of a border are tied together lies under the account. Stathis Stamoulakatos and Eleni Ouzounidou appear in Asimina Proedrou’s hundred and eight minute film, a joint German, Greek and North Macedonian production, completed in 2023.