Landscape in the Mist

In a working-class suburb of Athens, two illegitimate children, Voula, aged 11 and her brother Alexander, aged 5, dream each night that they will join their father in Germany. The father, in reality, does not exist and has been invented by their mother to keep them quiet. One day, Voula and Alexander decide to run away from home and go to Germany in search of their father. They go to the railway station where they board a train for Germany. When they are taken off the train because they do not have tickets they manage to give the police the slip and thus resume their journey. After a few hours of walking in the night they run into a family of traveling players led by a certain Orestes. They are a group of actors who wander from one end of Greece to the other always performing the same play. Voula and Alexander follow the traveling players for a while, they abandon them, finally reaching the main highway going north. As luck will have it this time they meet a truck driver, a vulgar drunk, who gives them a lift but rapes Voula in the back of the truck. Again, the two desperately run off and are pursued by the police. Orestes, aware of the danger they are in, rushes to their rescue on his motorbike. For all three life is suddenly transformed into a dream, a dream which ends, however, where the motorbike does: at a port where the traveling players have gathered together to sell off their stage costumes. The company breaks up. Orestes, who is still with the children, goes to a place nearby to sell his motorbike. Voula catches a glimpse of Orestes going off with the young man who has bought his bike, their hands touching slightly. Feeling betrayed, Voula ni longer knows who she can depend on. Orestes sadly waves to the children from the distance. Voula and Alexander go to the station. Last train, last stop. A river in the distance marks the border. They jump off the train and slip into a boat floating downstream. Stop! A yell followed by a shot breaks the silence. Voula screams. In the beginning was the darkness... She is afraid. Alexander grasps her hand and continues: ... and the light was divided from the darkness.