The best Manos Katrakis’s drama movies

Vassilis Georgiades directed this tense drama, one of the final Greek films made before the 1967 coup which led to restrictions on film content. The plot concerns struggles between peasants and the wealthy estate-owners over division of land in the early part of the 20th century. This battle is contrasted with the rivalry of two brothers over a woman's affections. The performances are somewhat lacking, but Georgiades' assured direction and presentation of a little-known chapter of Greek history resulted in an Oscar nomination as "Best Foreign Film."

An old communist returns to Greece after 32 years in the Soviet Union. However, things aren't the way he had hoped for.

The inextricably intertwined stories of five sex workers who live in a brothel at Pireas harbor.

The story of Nikos Belogiannis member of the communist party and officer of Ellas that has come back to Greece only to get arrested, tried for espionage on behalf of Russia and executed.

The poor Athenian neighborhood of Asyrmatos is the center of the world for the people who live there and who are trying to escape from poverty and deprivation. Rikos, a young man recently released from prison, is trying to make some money, while his girlfriend is seeing other men, and her brother is trying to contribute to the household’s finances. This neo-realist film features an excellent cast and made an impact when it was shown because of Alekos Alexandrakis’ sensitive directing and the film’s powerful social messages.

In Thebes in ancient Greece, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother Jocasta, having two sons - Eteocles and Polyneices - and two daughters - Ismene and Antigone. King Oedipus dies a beggar in the exile after gouging out his own eye, and Eteocle agrees to reign in Thebes in alternating years with Polynices. However, he refuses to resign after the first year and Polynieces raises an army and attacks Thebes, and they kill each other. The ruler of Thebes Creon decrees that Eleocles should have an honorable burial while the body of the traitor Polyneices should be left on the battlefield to be eaten by the jackals and vultures. However, Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon's surviving son Haemon, defies Creon's orders and buries her brother. When Creon is reported of the attitude of Antigone, he sentences her to be placed in a tomb alive. Antigone hangs herself in the tomb and Haemon tries to kill his father first and then he kills himself with his sword...

Athens, shortly before the outbreak of World War II and an Army General Staff official, Niki (Jenny Carezis), is charged with channeling confidential documents to an Italian agent. The category is right. The girl was blackmailing herself with the life of her brother studying in Italy. She does not make any effort to defend herself and is indifferent if she is sentenced to death, but she accepts the cooperative proposal proposed by General Darius, that is to continue to channel secret documents to the Italians, but now they are deliberately made to deceive the enemy . The whole case is also involved with a captain, Theodorou, who is in love with Niki. Theodorou is arrested for misappropriation of documents and goes through a military court where he is sentenced to demolition and death. Certainly, his execution was fictitious, and on the day Greek troops enter Korça, he is shown alive to Niki, which does not hide her surprise.

A quartet of short stories about Greece during the various occupations during World War 2

Intent on hurting herself, a beautiful but desperate daughter crashes her car on the day of her mother's wedding, unfolding a tragic tale of love, deception, and murder behind the closed doors of a wealthy family.

Karl (Petros Fyssoun) is a German officer who falls for a young Greek woman of Jewish ancestry in this symbolic war drama. He wants to marry Lisa (Elli Fotiou), but he dutifully turns her over to the Gestapo when she reveals she is Jewish. Karl learns of the Nazi atrocities when he is transferred to the Eastern Front. At the end of the war, a dejected Karl returns to Athens in hopes of being reunited with the woman whom he willingly turned over to authorities and who ended up in a concentration camp. The premise of the story is hard to take because Lisa was well aware of Karl's rampant anti-Semitic beliefs when her uncle overheard Karl making a speech.

One of filmmaker and expatriate writer Adonis Kyrou's best-known quotes translates roughly as "I urge you: Learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." The same could be said of Kyrou's own directorial work in Greece before the advent of the 1967 dictatorship forced him to flee to Paris. This confused mess, the first cinematic attempt at portraying the Greek resistance in WWII, caused quite a stink upon release, as much for its surprising style (recalling that of Bertolt Brecht) as for its subject matter. Reaction to its screening as part of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival's International Critic's Week was heated and divisive, proving Kyrou's later statement by rising above its own inherent silliness to achieve a sort of rarefied critical status. It's bad drama that nonetheless succeeds by dint of audacity more than quality (a comment which could apply equally to the work of many exploitation directors like Jean Rollin whom Kyrou later so lovingly profiled).

A new, ambitious prosecutor undertakes a great trial for a murder trial but things get very confused. Instead of the accused, slowly proved that culprit is actually the wife of itself.

Angelos Kreouzis (Nikos Kourkoulos) survives a shipwreck and reveals to the committee in charge that the disaster was not an accident, but the consequence of the neglect of the ship by those responsible.