The Last Note

Pantelis Voulgaris's 2017 Greek film recounts the execution of two hundred Greek resistance fighters by the German occupiers at Kaisariani on 1 May 1944, carried out in reprisal for a resistance ambush on Nazi forces. The film centres the last night of those two hundred men: whom they wrote to, what they shared, what they did not say. Voulgaris keeps away from the language of heroism; the men going to their deaths are afraid, they argue, some want to withdraw. The story of Napoleon Soukatzidis sits at the centre: the camp commander's interpreter, who refused the chance to save himself. The last section is long and almost ceremonial, a deliberate answer to the weight of the subject. Who it's for: viewers interested in the Greek resistance in the Second World War and in historical drama. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding scenes of mass execution, or who will find a heavy, ceremonial telling wearing.