The Suspended Step of the Stork (Leyleğin Geciken Adımı)

In Το μετέωρο βήμα του πελαργού (The Suspended Step of the Stork), a 1991 drama directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos, Alexandre, a television reporter, travels to a Greek border town on assignment. The town serves as a crossing point for refugees arriving from neighboring countries, with soldiers standing guard along the tense frontier. There, Alexandre becomes fascinated by the face of an elderly refugee who lives almost ascetically, and comes to suspect the man may be a Greek politician who vanished years earlier. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star. The film portrays the reality of 1990s Europe, where the Cold War has just ended yet new walls are already being built, through images centered on borders and the limits of human connection. It forms the first part of a trilogy on the notion of boundaries, followed by Ulysses' Gaze and Eternity and a Day. Screened in competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, it drew 60,000 admissions on its Greek release, double the combined total of the ten other Greek films released that year.