The best Xenia Kalogeropoulou’s war movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Xenia Kalogeropoulou’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Xenia Kalogeropoulou.
The Brave Bunch
6.2/10
Two friends, a military and a journalist, after the collapse of the Albanian front, go to Macedonia to organize resistance against the Bulgarians.
The Roundup
7.2/10
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).
Εγκατάλειψη
5.7/10
Με Τη Λάμψη Στα Μάτια
7.9/10
During the German occupation, the Nazis plan to execute 30 men in retaliation for the death of a German soldier at the hands of the partisans. Among the men are three brothers (Giorgos Fountas, Anestis Vlachos and Giannis Fertis). The villagers ask the German officer (Zoras Tsapelis) to spare the life of one of the brothers. He accepts on the condition that their father (Lavrentis Dianellos) selects the one to remain alive.
Hero Bunker
4.7/10
Following the torpedoing of the destroyer Elli on August 15, 1940 on Tinos by an Italian submarine, war was declared, and the Italians attacked the Albanian front on October 28. From an outpost on the Greek-Albanian border, a military truck unexpectedly comes under fire by Italian tanks. Petros, the only one who manages to escape death or captivity, saves a village girl, Maria. However, the Greeks manage to recapture the machine-gun nest, setting free the soldiers who had been pinned down. The platoon in question puts up a hard fight against the Italian invaders, while, at the same time, the Greek army is preparing for a counter-attack, which doesn't take long to happen. Right after, the Italians are forced to fall back; Northern Epirus is recaptured, and the army of the Badoglio is repulsed from the Adriatic.
