90 YEARS PAOK – NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE

PAOK F.C. (the Pan-Thessalonikian Sports Club of Constantinopolitans) was founded in 1926, in order to meet the deeper and hitherto unfulfilled need for the integration of the repressed refugees into a hospitable place. PAOK represents the roots for the uprooted people, a compass towards the lost homeland, the living memory that maintains its historicity within the reality of the present and the prospect of its future. 90 Years PAOK: Nostalgia for the Future is not a simple recording of the history of the football team but a live film diary of the club’s milestones, in conjunction with its historical progress and social development. This is a journey through time and space, a cinematic treatise about a club that represents an Idea. “Because PAOK is not just an sports club. Our fans say that the team is an Idea. Indeed, it represents the nostos (i.e. homeward journey) of the refugee as well as the rights of the lower classes and the repressed.” In the five months of shooting this film, Nikolas Triandafyllidis visited the core places where the heart of the club beats, to film the touching confessions of veterans and youngsters, coaches, current PAOK players and loyal fans, who have and always will honor the club’s colours and its sacred “heavy” jersey. The film, a peculiar time machine that travels from Toumba Stadium to the PAOK Fan Club in Dusseldorf, to Istanbul and Lisbon, meets the heroes of the past and the protagonists of the present. From glorious years to difficult times and back to the present, the movie captures a club’s history that is being continuously written on the stands, on the field and on the road, at big encounters against major rivals, but primarily with itself. This is the story of a club infused with passion and a strong commitment to the motto that Pablo Garcia introduced to the world of PAOK: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”