About

This is a terribly sad film, an unpleasant film that rejects all relief stemming from easy hopes. It is a film about the present we live in, about how things seem to stay the same as if nothing had happened despite all the political changes taking place around us.

New Year's Eve, 1976: After discovering the body of a partisan fighter during a hunting trip, a group of Greece's social elite are forced to consider the entrenched factionalism that led to the country's Civil War. For Angelopoulos, the hunting party represents 'the composite conscience of a certain generation and certain social class' and he puts their guilt on trial when the body is transported back to their hotel and an inquest takes place. The presence of the body from 1949 – once frozen but now with a seemingly fresh wound – prompts each member to testify to their own culpability in undermining the democratic process in Greece. 'We cannot escape history,' one recalls as they face a series of tableaux re-creating their actions. Made in the wake of the 1975 Greek Junta Trials in which military leaders were tried for treason and insurrection, The Hunters is Angelopoulos's indictment of Greece's post-war autocratic government and those responsible for social and political upheaval.

Ages 18+