nickperdikaris

What if you had the power to decide for Johnny or Billy in that Hollywood flick you saw recently? Would you have returned to the scene of the crime after successfully getting away the first time? Would you return home to get your grandfather's watch while murderous mobsters are looking for you? Tobias Weber's Late Shift allows you to make these choices.

Shot in London and released in 2016, the Swiss production is being called the first ever interactive film – the movie where you can be the hero. Remember those books when you were a kid? If Optimus Prime should just transform and roll out, go to page 84.If he should stay and fight Megatron, go to page 32. Well, Weber and his crew have brought the you-be-the-hero theme to the silver screen and your mobile device – and it is one very unique and game changing experience. What will amaze you the most is the seamlessness of the whole process. There are absolutely no pauses or lags while you are making your choices that would make it feel like a video game. The result is an authentic film viewing experience.

Most movies try to distract you from everyday life and troubles in the world. For that 90 minutes to 2 hours you will spend watching a film, you are meant to forget about your bills, the job you hate, the boss you hate even more, that annoying neighbor, traffic jams, the all-talk-no-trousers-politicians (mis)representing you, the never-ending war…you get the picture. Some directors use time-travelling sports cars, slick-talking mobsters, or great battles in space to allow the viewer to take a plunge into their fantasy. There are some directors who wish to do the opposite. Some movies are meant to remind today's desensitized and mentally numbed masses of the unspeakable (and unfortunately unspoken) horrors and tribulations that plague today's global society. Director Sofia Exarchou's Park is one of these. In her first feature film, Exarchou paints a Greece on a canvas of shortcomings and short-sightedness. The colors she uses are found in a group of coming-of-age youth who spend their mischievous days in Athens' now abandoned Olympic Village.

Opening with a shot from within the #80 bus line, writer and director Bill Davies introduces the audience to a lifestyle well known to those who lived in the era, or to those whose parents or grand-parents did.

The documentary unravels the heartbreaking lifestyle of Greeks who dealt with major economic and cultural problems and whose pride prevented them from turning to begging. Instead, they tried to "stick to their own kind'' and remain faithfully within the Greek community, asking for help and support from either associations like the Cretan Association, or from benevolent societies, from non-profit organizations, or even from other Greeks, who had managed to be in a better financial state than themselves.