LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST

Voula and her younger brother Alexandros leave home in search of the father they have never met, whom they believe is waiting for them somewhere in Germany. Certain only that they must keep going, the two children set out across a cold, wintry Greece by train, on foot and in the cars of strangers. From this simple journey, Theo Angelopoulos creates one of the most beautiful and emotionally overwhelming films of the 1980s.

LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST moves at the pace of discovery. Angelopoulos allows his long takes to unfold until places that initially seem ordinary acquire a strange and monumental power. Giorgos Arvanitis’ extraordinary cinematography makes the children appear very small within landscapes whose scale and meanings they are only beginning to understand, while Eleni Karaindrou’s aching score opens another emotional dimension within the images. Again and again, Angelopoulos gives us time to look until what we are looking at has somehow changed.

Their journey brings encounters with strangers, fleeting friendships, moments of tenderness and danger, and sudden visions of astonishing beauty. Angelopoulos never hurries toward them. He lets weather gather, silence deepen, figures cross enormous distances and moments unfold until reality slips almost imperceptibly into something mysterious and sublime. Haunting, deeply moving and filled with images that remain lodged in the memory, LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST is slow cinema at its most emotionally immediate: two children moving urgently through a world much larger, older, crueler and more beautiful than they yet know.