The intriguingly titled Moon, 66 Questions may be the first feature from Jacqueline Lentzou, but the young Greek film-maker has already made a splash on the international circuit. Born in Athens and raised in Thessaloniki, she graduated with a BA in Film and Television from the American College of Greece, before relocating to the London Film School aged 21.
Her first film, And the Kid, featured on the official website of Britain’s National Gallery. Her subsequent short films have played at Berlin and Locarno. Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year, her sixth short, was selected for the 2018 edition of Critics’ Week at Cannes where it won the Leica Cine Discovery Prize.
“My family lost my grandfather when he was 50, so I never got to know him,” says Lentzou. “However, my grandmother talked about him as I was growing up. He loved cinema and wanted to make films. I guess unconsciously, this has worked out, because somehow it’s like I’m materialising my grandfather’s dream.”
Moon, 66 Questions — like many Greek adventures before — concerns a journey home. Artemis (Sofia Kokkali) is an anxious, 23-year-old only child of divorced parents. She is summoned home to Athens by a late-night phone call from her mother. It falls to Artemis to tend to her ailing and estranged father, Paris, (Lazaros Georgakopoulos), who is declining after a relapse of multiple sclerosis and a stroke.
Her role as reluctant carer to a man who was never an especially good communicator allows Artemis to discover her father’s secret relationship with an old family friend, a reveal that allows for a new understanding and bond. The names hint at mythological underpinnings, but the drama is rooted in more relatable emotional problems.
“When I was writing it, I just picked the names because, aesthetically, they sound good to my ears,” laughs Lentzou. “It was only when I went back afterwards that I thought about the unconscious influence of ancient Greek tragedy. And I think we have tragedy in a way. I have an interest in unconventional family schemes and in the concept of unspoken love. Even as a child I could sense that many people love each other in their own way, but they don’t have a way of expressing it. And the lack of means to express love can be painful and tragic.”
Moon, 66 Questions, which premiered at the Berlinale, has recently won the Golden Puffin at Reykjavík International Film Festival, the Cineuropa Award for Best Film at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and, for Sofia Kokkali, the Best Actress award at Nouveau Cinema. The feature marks Kokkali’s third collaboration with Lentzou, following on from The End of Suffering (A Proposal) and Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year.
“We have been working together since 2018,” says the writer-director. “And over these years, we have developed a very nice friendship, which is very liberating for a film-maker because there’s a sense of trust that allows for another sense of freedom. I think she’s great in the film. She gives a unique performance because she’s very sad and very expressive at the same time.”
Kokkali’s extraordinary, textured performance is complemented by pillow shots from old home movies, Tarot card inter-titles, and images drawn from astrology and the lunar cycle. These symbols coalesce into a mystery befitting the film’s secrets and inquisitive title.
“I wanted to create a layer around the universe of the story,” says Lentzou. “In the sense that the Tarot elements and sky are not necessarily associated with the story at all. I was thinking a lot about what people do when they are in real pain and how they really seek answers. They turn to all kinds of things. And it doesn’t seem to matter if they believe or not in the answer. The actual action of asking or receiving an answer is sometimes enough to pacify. Maybe that’s illusionary and maybe that’s what happens for the main character.”
For much of the 21st century — thus far, at least — film fans have looked to Greece for new and exciting talents. Beginning with Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar-nominated Dogtooth in 2009, the Greek Weird Wave — as critics like to call it — has yielded such confounding delights as Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg, Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ Suntan, and Christos Nikou’s Apples. Lentzou’s work, with its paradoxical dreamy documentary style, feels like a new chapter — post-Weird, if you will. Her influences, too — including Gus van Sant’s Elephant, German Expressionism, Wim Wenders and Chantal Ackerman — lack the surrealism favoured by many of her compatriots.
“I am one of the people who wonders if the Greek wave exists,” admits Lentzou. “There are impeccable talents with amazing vision in Greece. So I see individuals. I don’t necessarily see them as sharing something. I don’t believe that there is a way that links us. I worry that viewers have this information and don’t give a new film a chance because they assume the film belongs in a certain place. It blinds in a way. But there is practical use and let’s not forget that film-making is a huge business. So people need to categorise things. If it’s used for a good purpose, and helps films get made, I don’t mind at all.”
The prolific Lentzou had made six films before the MeToo hashtag emerged in the film industry and slowly began changing the cinematic landscape. It has changed things for Lentzou, too.
“When I started off, when I came back from London to Greece, I could not find a producer because most producers here are men and they would look at me as if an alien,” she recalls. “It was really shocking. I had never experienced that in London. I could see it in their eyes that they couldn’t trust me because I was a young girl. It is very ironic what happened. Because after I started collecting awards with my shorts, the same people that had rejected me were messaging me in a very patronising way, saying we always knew you would do it. It’s a very big problem being a woman from the Balkans. And we Greeks are much more close to the Balkans than the European mentality.
“But I have wondered if I was a guy would I have this attention at the moment? Does it help that I’m a girl now? Are people now more open to female film-makers? Definitely. I think that’s a nice part of our world and that it’s our job, in a way, to take revenge for all the women that have been in the shadows for decades.”
Moon, 66 Questions opens on June 24th
