Plato likens the human soul with a cage, where knowledge is birds flying. We’re born with the cage empty and, as we grow, we collect birds and they go in the cage for future use. When we need to access knowledge we put our hand in the cage, hunt for a bird – and sometimes catch the wrong one.

Ornithology uses the term “Zugunruhe” to describe the turbulent behaviour of birds before they migrate, whether free or caged.

These two images, birds inhabiting the human soul and the distress of the migrating bird became the starting points for this film, commissioned on the theme of Emigration.

A flock of birds circles and moves a cage vehicle, seeking escape from a city half finished and abandoned, with roads interrupted by fragments of fallen statues. Those hands are simultaneously the pursuit of knowledge and also the heroes/leaders of the past that we have rejected but are still haunting us.

In a time when Europe seems to be imploding, this is my portrait of Athens.