Hades (1996)

The search for a missing woman gives an Athenian lawyer, Manos - who is suffocating in his marriage to Kynthia - the opportunity to travel to Epirus. Leaving his familiar surroundings, he gradually enters another world, unknown and mysterious. His journey resembles the descent to Hades, and his visit to the supposed entrance to the underworld is revelatory. In Epirus he discovers that Evanthia, the woman he is searching for and whose disappearance twenty years ago provoked a major inheritance issue, has, in the meantime, married a Greek refugee from Albania, Fanis. Circumstances oblige Fanis to return to Albania, but Evanthia goes in his stead. Manos discovers Fanis hiding in an isolated hut and learns that Evanthia has been in Albania for quite some time. He decides to cross the border, finds Evanthia and brings her back. This is a film about loss and searching, both external and internal. An introspective meditation on life inspired by the social disorder of the Balkans in the mid '90s.