About

The Dust of Time is a film that treats the past as if it were in the present. It is history written in capital letters and history written in small print. We used to think of ourselves as the subjects of history. Nowadays I can't say if we are its subjects or objects.

The Dust of Time draws from late 20th Century events in Siberia, Kazakhstan, Italy, Germany and America, including the death of Stalin, Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, and the fall of the Berlin wall. Willem Dafoe plays as an American filmmaker trying to complete production on a film about his parents. The project recounts the life of his mother Eleni (Irène Jacob), who was exiled to the Soviet Union and her attempts to reconnect with her husband Spyros (Michel Piccoli) in Greece. A reunion of the filmmaker's family in present day Berlin evokes painful memories of the decisions made in their past and the filmmaker is forced to face his own predicament as his marriage falls apart and his daughter goes missing.

The Dust of Time was Angelopoulos's final film. He died on January 24, 2012 in a car accident during the production of The Other Sea, the final part of this projected trilogy that focused on Greece's financial crisis.

Ages 18+