Proini peripolos

Post-apocalyptic wasteland somewhere in Greece.An unnamed female wanderer wants to reach the Sea.She attempts to traverse through decaying and crumbling nameless city where the members of Morning Patrol kill everyone they meet.Forbidden zone is extremely dangerous.But the woman manages to get help from a lonely guard in despair and so it begins their intimate link between love and death.Very moody and dark post-apocalyptic science-fiction/neo-noir flick with splendid location sets and dialogue excerpts taken from published works written by Daphne du Maurier,Philip K. Dick,Raymond Chandler and Herman Raucher.The plot moves slowly but visions of an abandoned dead-dripping city are mesmerizing.8 industrial collapses out of 10.

It's the near future, and a catastrophe (plague, war, who knows?) has let the few survivors to wander aimlessly in the wild. One of them, a woman, wants only to "go West, to the sea" where she believes life could be better but in order to achieve that, she must go through a ghost city which is guarded by the Morning Patrol (Proini Peripolos).

Proini Peripolos is really far from Hollywood movies or blockbusters. It's just an artistic movie with slow pace and it's real power is the setting with grim pictures, atmospheric music and isolated landscapes. Try to find it if you can although the language (it's in Greek) will be a problem for foreign audiences.

Blade Runner meets Stalker. It's an unique, poetic, fascinating Sci-fi movie , which few viewers will appreciate. In an post-apocalyptic desolate world, a woman wanders trying to survive from the dark, the desolation and the morning patrol. The viewer will wander by woman's side to dark city's narrows and to beautiful landscapes, inspired from atmospheric music and pictures.

I have really mixed feelings about this film.

First of all, I find the choice of Athens as a filming location for a science fiction movie a daring (though ultimately unsuccessful) attempt. The city, as a setting, looks completely undisturbed and normal, lacking even the slightest dystopian element, which caused me to lose interest in the movie after 30 minutes. Yes, the Greek sun (which I love dearly) accompanies almost everything in life greatly, but to a science fiction movie? I'm not that sure.

And what about those endless references to other movies, those phone calls? Oh, oh... They were a burden to watch for me.

These being said, the film made me think about so many things while watching it, and perhaps that was the trick and the magic of it.

A woman navigates through a deserted city in a post-apocalyptic world: she remembers nothing about who she is or what happened. All she knows is she needs to keep walking. It's not clear what caused humanity to get to this point. She fights off enemies who try to kill her, she steals all the resources she can find and all this while we listen to a beautiful hazy internal monologue which is almost poetic. She then meets a man and forces him to help her get out of the city. He doesn't remember anything either: only that he must kill everyone he finds that is trying to survive. He continues the beautiful monologue while being lost himself. Together they struggle to survive, remember and find meaning in this. I liked how the film didn't follow the usual commercial line for post apocalyptic and sci fi movies. It left a lot for the viewer to interpret, the action was relatively slow and there weren't a lot of characters. At some points though, I wish the plot moved a little faster. Overall a really good movie that I suggest to anyone.