Pantelis Voulgaris is a Greek director renowned for the aesthetic quality of his movies as well as his preoccupation with modern Greek history. It did not come to me as a surprise therefore, that I enjoyed the film so much. The historic facts were there, the story was good, the actors were well cast and played beautifully, photography was good as with all his films, but I really was pleasantly surprised by the details of the filming itself. This film stroke me as one that paid real attention to detail, very much unlike other Greek films. The sound was really good (an issue with older modern Greek movies) and all effects used were really well thought out and balanced.

The story itself is moving, (maybe less so if you are not Greek). Communists imprisoned by the fascist friendly Metaxas regime, are not released when the war breaks to fight at the front, and instead, the German occupation finds them behind bars. The killing of a Nazi general by the resistance, causes a huge retaliation of the Nazis against the Greeks.

When I saw the trailer for this film I was amazed by the high production value and the serious tone the film had ,with out been overly dramatic nor it had ludicrous scenes.

To the film itself ,it focuses on the execution of the inmates in in Kaisariani, as reprisal for the Greek Resistance ambush against Nazis. In the film we see how violent and predatory were the occupation forces as well as the willingness of all of the population either to fight back or support those who fight back. And when it comes to the execution it is portrait in a very mature and emotional manner.

As for historical accuracy, top notch truly the director and his team put a lot of effort in order to be faithful to the events and shows what the people of my country, Greece were willing to do for resisting to the foreign occupiers. As for the main point of view character Napoleon Soukatzidis, I love that he is neither a bad-ass nor a leading figure, he is just a significant yet small part of that story and I appreciated that interpretation.

Over all this film is the best that the Greek cinema has made in ages and I hope that this just the first of many to come.

I really liked the first part of this film. It informed me about the occupation of Greece during WWII, something I knew little about prior to this. I especially enjoyed the way the German captors were portrayed. Some scenes were a little unnerving and I only assume they were based on historical sources. The reason I didn't give this film a higher rating? The last part of it was too melodramatic and drawn out for too long. It was just too obvious what was going to happen by that point. Other than shortening I'm not sure how else the ending could be improved & can't give a better score as it is.