The Suspended Step of the Stork (To meteoro vima tou pelargou)

Theodoros Angelopoulos directed The Suspended Step of the Stork (Greek: To meteoro vima tou pelargou), a 1991 drama. A Greek-Italian-French co-production of about 143 minutes, it stars Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. It is the first film in the director's trilogy about borders, followed by Ulysses' Gaze and Eternity and a Day; Angelopoulos treats the frontier as a threshold in communication, in love and in the passage from life to death.

At the center is Alexandre, a young television reporter whose assignment takes him to an unnamed Greek border town. The town is a crossing point for refugees, and the soldiers' traditional ceremonial changing of the guard adds tension. Among the refugees Alexandre is struck by the face of an elderly man living almost like a hermit, and he begins to suspect he is a Greek politician who vanished years ago. Angelopoulos wrote the screenplay with Tonino Guerra and Petros Markaris; Gerasimos Skiadaressis also appears.

The film portrays 1990s Europe, where new walls were rising just as the Cold War ended, through the themes of borders and failed communication. It played in the main competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, losing the Palme d'Or to Barton Fink. Its first Greek run drew 60,000 viewers, double the combined audience of the year's ten other Greek releases.