Love under the Date-Tree

Movies > Feature Films

Love under the Date-Tree

ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ΣΤΗ ΧΟΥΡΜΑΔΙΑ

1 hour 22 minutes – 1990 – Comedy, Romance

Panagiotis and Giannis are two good friends, but also rivals in love. The first is a merchant and the second is a violinist; one is tall and slim, and the other is short and fat; one is bossy, the other one is mild. Bot make an inimitable comic couple, wandering in the Peloponnese, looking for a date tree that will prove the innocence or guilt of the wife of one of them and possibly love of the other. They are guided by an old photograph depicting Panagiotis’ wife, Maria, in the arms of Giannis, under a date tree. However, in the area of their search, there are no date trees.

CAST

Argyris Bakirtzis
Lazaros Andreou
Dora Masklavanou
Vina Asiki
Christos Vakalopoulos
Vicky Psaltidou
Maria Thanoglou

CREDITS

DIRECTOR: Stavros Tsiolis
SCREENPLAY: Stavros Tsiolis
(based on a story by Demetres Kehaidis)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vassilis Kapsouros
EDITING: Costas Iordanidis
MUSIC: Pavlos Papadopoulos, Stamatis Spanoudakis
SETS: Antonis Kioukas
COSTUMES: Antonis Kioukas
SOUND: Thanassis Arvanitis, Sotiris Pereas,
Costas Poulantzas

AWARDS

THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL
Best Film
Best Actor (Lazaros Andreou)

REVIEWS

“Love Under the Date Tree” is a comment on melancholy, loneliness and death, with an amazing comic-tragic couple (Argyris Bakirtzis, Lazaros Andreou) that alludes, and in terms of its ending, to that other, equally heartbreaking, Ratso Rizzo–Midnight Cowboy, and he wanders in a frosty and exquisitely recorded Greek province, dotted, you dare say, with the lonely “Women” of Kostas Ouranis. Comedy? Yes, if life is the interval between two deaths, as the old scrapbooks used to say.

Achilleas Kyriakides – OTHONI

STAVROS TSIOLIS

He was born in Arcadia in 1937 and died in Athens in 2019. In the 1950s, he studied film and began working as an assistant director in major studios. He participated in dozens of commercial films, and from the late 1960s, he started directing films for major studio “Finos Films”. After achieving significant box office success, he left cinema in 1973, only to return in 1985, creating 10 feature films until his death. These films were characterized by his personal minimalist style, subtle humor, and a quest to discover the “real Greece” hidden in the countryside, small villages, humble people, folk music, local myths and legends and authentic human relationships. His works gained recognition in contemporary Greek popular culture, with some of their lines becoming part of everyday Greek language. Beyond cinema, he also wrote plays and folk songs. Photo Credits: Finos Films

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