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THE WAKE

By Nikos GRAMMATIKOS

GRAAL SA - as PROD

unknown - Completed 2005

- Year of production
- 2005
- Genres
- unknown
- Countries
- GREECE
- Languages
- GREEK
- Duration
- 104 mn
- Director(s)
- Nikos GRAMMATIKOS
- Cast
- Vaggelis MOURIKIS, Michail TSOUROUNAKIS, Dimitra HATOUPI
- Producer(s)
- Letta ANDREADI
- Synopsis
- The Wake is the gripping neo-noir tale of two estranged brothers forced to weather a long, dark night roaming the Greek underworld. Following this pair - one a hard-as-nails cop who has fallen from grace, the other a demure young priest - director Nikos Grammatikos unravels his tightly wound plot one layer at a time. Each turn of the brothers' tumultuous journey throws their irreconcilable differences into ever-sharper relief. Each moment is charged with tension and nothing is as it seems.
  Andreas (Vaggelis Mourikis) is a tempestuous police officer on the lam after committing a terrible crime. Running out of options, he contacts his seemingly saintly brother Nikos (Michail Tsourounakis), even though the two have not seen hide nor hair of each other in ten years. Andreas insists they must flee their home, the island of Salamina (near Athens), that very night. Reluctantly, pious Nikos is dragged by his world-weary brother on a desperate search for a crime boss also named Andreas (Yiannis Economides), who just happens to be their brother-in-law. Will Andreas evade justice, or is he doomed? And will Nikos's faith survive their grim travails?
  Grammatikos's fraternal melodrama unfolds in the place of his birth, and his intimate relationship to the island radiates from every dark, gritty frame. With the sad eyes of someone who has seen it all, Mourikis is suitably grey-haired and grizzled as the cop with blood on his hands. Tsourounakis, meanwhile, sporting a finely trimmed beard and ponytail, is equally superb as the tranquil man of God whose serenity gradually erodes the more his older brother exposes him to the harsh realities of the world outside the walls of the church. While Andreas and Nikos initially seem as incongruous as black and white, after all they endure their psyches take on an unsettling shade of grey.