When Greek director Elina Psykou’s documentary Stray Bodies premiered in competition at the 26th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, riot police guarded the streets in front of the theatre, and public protests were temporarily banned across the city.
The festival had already seen a violent attack on a transgender couple a few days earlier, followed by huge demonstrations in support of the LGBTQI+ community. Far-right groups had expressed plans of disrupting the film’s opening night after its poster – depicting a topless, pregnant woman nailed to a cross – had been called ‘blasphemous’ by both church officials and right-wing politicians. Nonetheless, the full-house screening at Thessaloniki’s majestic Olympion theatre went without any interruptions or unwanted events of this kind.
Body politics
Stray Bodies deals with three apparently different subject matters: Abortion, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and euthanasia. This might seem like more than a mouthful for just one doc, but the combination works well – not least because they are linked in more than one way. The film portrays people from countries where these procedures are not allowed and, therefore, have to travel to another country to have them done. All within the EU, where rules vary substantially among member countries.
Among the film’s central characters is a young woman from Malta, a country with strict anti-abortion laws, who travels to Italy to abort an unwanted pregnancy, and an Italian woman planning a so-called procreative tourism trip to Greece to receive IVF treatment in the hope of becoming pregnant, since single people are not allowed this procedure in her home country. In addition, the film depicts elderly, terminally ill (and also female) patients who have chosen to end their lives through euthanasia in Switzerland – including a both moving and challenging, but respectfully captured, scene of an actual assisted suicide. The theme of euthanasia is mostly conveyed through a Greek woman travelling to Switzerland to learn more about this field – but the film also includes other characters who contribute to its many-faceted discussion of the three subject matters.
At its core, Stray Bodies is a film about bodily autonomy. Director Psykou treats these medical practices as various ways to exert control of the body through laws and regulations, which are also closely linked to religious beliefs and conventions. The historical and hardly abolished patriarchy is certainly a key word as well, so the film’s focus on the female body feels highly justified.
Stray Bodies is a film about bodily autonomy.
Allows different perspectives
Following two fiction features, The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013) and Son of Sofia (2017), Stray Bodies is the Greek filmmaker’s first documentary. Her approach is playful, with an eclectic range of stylistic and formal devices that – rather surprisingly – also finds room for ‘song and dance’. Among the latter elements is a music video segment accompanied by Madonna’s eighties hit Papa Don’t Preach, the song itself being about a young woman dealing with a pregnancy, as part of the storyline of the Maltese girl wanting an abortion. Audiences might not necessarily notice, but this whole section of the film consists of re-enactments based on testimonies by women who have made similar journeys. According to the end credits, this is ‘due to the real risk of imprisonment facing women in Malta who have abortions’.
Although the film was controversial even before it was screened, Stray Bodies handles its subject matters in less provocative and one-sided ways than the poster may suggest, also including the not particularly progressive voices of people who are against abortion, IVF and euthanasia. Interestingly enough, when the Swiss euthanasia doctor points out the logical inconsistency of not allowing people to choose their own dignified death while abortion allows people to terminate a future human being that most likely would have wanted to live, she makes a somehow convincing argument against abortion – even if this is not her intention.
By allowing these different perspectives, Stray Bodies presents a complex and thought-provoking discussion of its political core issues, with a consistent eye on the larger moral and ethical questions they evoke. Still, we never really doubt that the filmmaker herself is strongly in favour of the right to choose – whether it’s to have an abortion, attempt to get pregnant through IVF, or to end ones terminally ill life. Since the film deals with several difficult subject matters and raises no less difficult questions about them, this is arguably also a strength.
At the awards ceremony in Thessaloniki, Stray Bodies received a Special Mention from the International Competition Jury. The film was also screened at CPH:DOX a few days later, in both the F:ACT Award and Body Politics sections.
The lesbian community
Only a few weeks before the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was passed in Greece, as the first Orthodox Christian country to legislate this. The historic law made it even more appropriate that this year’s edition of the festival presented a retrospective ‘Citizen Queer’ Tribute program – consisting of 33 queer documentaries spanning several decades, up until recent productions.
Not surprisingly, LGBTQI+-themed films were also to be found in other program sections of the festival. Among these was the Greek documentary Lesvia, which was screened in the Newcomers Competition and is director Tzeli Hadjidimitriou’s first feature documentary. The film tells the story of the lesbian community in Eressos, a village on the Southwestern coast of the Greek island of Lesvos. Being the birthplace of the ancient poet Sappho, whose life and body of work holds a significant position as the first poet to portray love and desire among women, this village attracted lesbian women from all over the world from the mid-seventies – and is still a rare community for queer females today. Gathering at a specific beach, later also with adjacent bars, tavernas and hotels especially for lesbians, Eressos was a needed place for them to be liberated and free. A place of acceptance of both bodies and sexual orientation, one could perhaps say.
As a queer woman born and raised in Lesvos, the filmmaker has a personal approach to the film’s subject matter, and the doc includes her own essayistic reflections as voice-over narration. In addition to having directed short films, Hadjidimitriou is a stills photographer, with several published books of her works.
Lesvia tells the story of this lesbian community through a combination of the filmmaker’s own and others’ footage and words.
Conflict and acceptance
Nonetheless, the film tells the story of this lesbian community through a combination of her own and others’ footage and words. For the last ten years, she has collected pictures and archival material from the island community and conducted several interviews with its members. These interviews blend together in the film, creating a sense of this shared, communal atmosphere. Throughout the four depicted decades, we also witness both conflicts and acceptance towards these women by the local inhabitants.
The documentary balances these different elements nicely and gives interesting insight into the sense of community and freedom from prejudice that was to be found here for the queer women. It also portrays how economic factors contributed to the other islanders becoming more positive towards them, but sheer exposure and getting to know the people themselves seems nonetheless to have played an important part. Although queer women presumably are more accepted in several places in the world today, and a sense of belonging might also be found in other places (including those online), this community still appears to be needed.
Lesvia won The Greek Film Centre’s Award for best Greek debut, which was shared with Spyros Mantzavinos and Kostas Antarachas for their film Panellinion. In addition, Hadjidimitriou’s film received a Special Mention from the jury of the festival’s Mermaid Award for best LGBTQI+-themed film.
See also another review at https://www.moderntimes.review/stray-bodies/
