THE SUSPENDED STEP OF THE STORK

While working on a story in the border area, a young reporter discovers a divided town bisected by a river which is also the national frontier. The town, a remote ghost town, almost forgotten at the end of the world, has been named "waiting room" by the locals because most of its inhabitants are refugees from different countries many of whom have crossed the border illegally at some time or other, and are now waiting for their turn to leave and start a new life "somewhere else”.

ln the course of his investigation he also comes upon an aging, reclusive refugee, who lives there cultivating a field. But the young reporter believes he is a famous Greek politician who disappeared years before, leaνing behind him many unanswered questions. The man's identity is never resolved but the hapless refugees and divided village allow the reporter to understand his despair over the human condition.

Yet another poetical allegory by Theo Angelopoulos, on the great open questions of our turbulent age, a film about despair, at the end of the twentieth century, which remains contemporary to this day.