Hard Goodbyes: My Father

Elias is a boy of ten. He lives with his family in Athens and the year is 1969. He loves reading Jules Verne and looking at the sky. He and his father are very close. The man is a travelling salesman, always on the road. His absence weighs on everyone at home. Before a long trip he makes his son a promise. They will watch the moon landing together on television. But he is killed in a road accident. His mother and his older brother grieve in their own ways. Elias refuses to accept the death. He builds a world in which his father is alive. He tells his friends news of him. He writes letters to his grandmother in his father’s name. The family takes him to the summer house. On the night of the landing the boy says goodbye in his own way. Yorgos Karayannis and Stelios Mainas appear in the hundred and thirteen minute film, a Greek production Penny Panayotopoulou finished in 2002.