DOCVILLE: ANAPAFSEOS ST., ATHENS

Anapafseos Street, Athens is an episode of Docville, a cinema-verite documentary series about urban life in Greece today, in a time of crisis: Anapafsis in Greek means resting, and it is usually the name given to streets leading to cemeteries. Two women who cannot accept their children’s deaths have turned the cemetery into their second home and try to support each other during this traumatic experience. The “drama” takes place in the district of the dead. The neighbors are the pallbearers, the necro-cosmetologists, the morticians, the marble grave makers, the people selling flowers, the cake makers, the gravediggers, police officers and amateur storytellers. The land of the dead as a part of the land of the living.