The best Vasilis Diamantopoulos’s movies

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement by his blackmailers.

A modest film of three independent parts showing sad couple stories.

A biography of the former Greek prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos and the recreation of his acts and the political and social climate in Greece from 1910 to 1927.

A few hours after the arrival of Aristeidis (Dinos Iliopoulos), Mary's (Kakia Analyti) soon to be fiance, her father Andreas (Vasilis Diamantopoulos), an upstanding citizen, lies about having a meeting with the Bishop and instead goes to meet his neighbor Betty (Anna Kyriakou). Aristeidis, on his way to Mary's house as a series of misfortunes and ends up in a fight with Andreas (whom he does not know) while he is with Betty at a studio apartment.

In this black comedy, the men in a lovely mansion slowly give in to a kind of terminal sloth after they are freed from the need to actually work. The father takes to his bed after his hernia acts up and never leaves it. Of his three sons, only one wants to do much about leaving, and he does in fact cross the front threshold of the house with his lover, who is also the maid. However, before he has gotten very far, he is very tired, and goes to sleep where he stands. One of the sons outdoes them all by sleeping literally all the time. He is not in a coma -- he is just very, very lazy and tired. Some critics have viewed this film as a sharply delineated social satire.

C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who wrote exquisitely about his beloved cities, Alexandria and Constantinople, and about the beautiful, sexually available men who lived in them. Thanks to Lawrence Durrell's frequent favorable mention of him in his popular novels The Alexandria Quartet, Cavafy has become a figure of considerable literary interest outside of Greek and homosexual circles. Part biography, part fantasy, but very much in the spirit of the poet's work, this film begins in 1933 as a young literateur reads to Cavafy (Vassilis Diamandopoulos), lying abed in an Alexandrian hospital. Cavafy drifts away into memories from his life and the film takes up his story from childhood.

Two friends (Thanasis Vengos and Vasilis Diamantopoulos) meet after many years and recollect the tragi-comic events they went through during the German occupation.

A journalist (Alekos Alexandrakis), working together with a young director (Peris Michailidis), tries to gather information about a family that was separated due to political turmoil. They locate some of its members, who tell their dramatic stories that began with the Civil War. The two men’s search is interrupted when a key person refuses to speak

An old chauffeur, after removing his rambling son, decides to live with his orphaned girl while facing the advent of the car that displaces the carts.

This film is a social comment of the times, exploring issues that centre around relationships and what was allowed and what was not allowed at the time (early 60s) in Greece. There are sub-plots also, mainly relating to the life of the poor city dwellers, social injustice and seeming double standards. Aliki Vougiouklaki is a poor young girl dreaming of a better life and the "handsome prince on a white stallion" who will deliver her from her miserable existence. She meets and falls in love with a young man (Nikos Kourkoulos) who also falls in love with her, but things are not as simple as they first seem. His past comes to haunt them with tragic consequences. Vassilis Diamantopoulos is excellent as the half-crazed old captain whose life strangely echoes that of young Aliki.