EUFF 2022: Patchwork

Cyprus/Israel/Slovenia | Petros Charalambous | 2021 | 80 min

Petros Charalambous’s follow-up to Boy on the Bridge (EUFF 2017) is a knotty, multi-faceted drama of middle-aged regret. Angeliki Papoulia, the fearless Greek actor at the centre of Yorgos Lanthimos’s break-out films Dogtooth (2009) and Alps (2011), stars as Chara, a complicated character who, in producer and writer Janine Teerling’s script, is presented with a series of foils: her mother, a dreaded influence; the new hire at Chara’s workplace, childless and content; and a prickly teenaged intern, who she might take under her wing. “Chara’s family is everything to her, and yet she sometimes ponders a life without them … Charalambous’s psychological drama raises several provocative questions: What makes a woman a mother? And is motherhood a natural state of boundless love and caring, or is it an ideal imposed by society? A multilayered story of a woman struggling through moments of existential angst” (Sandra Hezinová, Karlovy Vary).

“Papoulia is perfectly cast … There are few actresses who can so intensely embody this complexity of a character built on trauma, insecurity, and the need for love.” Vladan Petkovic, Cineuropa