Wednesday 04:45

Directed by Alexis Alexiou

Greece, Germany, Israel (2015)

I got a chance to catch the film, Wednesday 04:45 at the 2015 TriBeCa Film Festival, the site of its world premiere, as well as a talk back session with director Alexis Alexiou and actor Stelios Mainas who plays the character, Stelios, in the movie. The film, a Eurimages-sponsored coproduction, was written in 2010 and inspired by the downhill movement due to the financial crisis in Greece & Europe. Alexiou says... "[The film] is sort of like an allegory to what happened. Everything went downhill... What happened in Greece really was a crash and you can see it in the film." Except the film doesn't take place in the banks or on a stock exchange, but rather in the Greek streets and suburbs where you borrow your money from the wrong people.

Stelios has a failing marriage and kids to take care of, but he is focused on his jazz club more so than anything else. Stelios is in much debt to a Romanian gangster and is told to pay back the money by Wednesday (and I bet you can guess the time). Stelios tries to bargain with the Romanian because so many other people are in debt to him. But the Romanian says that Stelios can't pay off his debt with other people's debt. Stelios gets mixed up in a series of favors and watches his life pass and death appear before his eyes due to his actions, but with every glimpse, there is the smallest ounce of hope that everything will be okay.

"[Even] if we have done everything and we fail, at least something better might happen afterwards. Maybe not now but for generations to come," says Alexiou, reflecting upon the hope found in the film and reflecting on the Greek political-financial situation. With the financial situation and conversation of the Grexit happening right now, a potential Greek exit from the currency-based Euro zone, you can see how this film reflects the social conscious. Germany, also one of the main financial supporters of the film, is also one of the strongest economies in the Euro zone, showing the special relationship that this movie has compared to the greater European, and global, scale.

Besides the historical and political context, this movie is full of great cinematography and one of the scenes looks like it belongs in a less stylized version of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Instead of drawing out the timeline, this movie crunches it together, showing the evolution of Stelios' character and if he can gather his debts. For an insightful, independent movie filled with some criminal action and dealings, this is a great movie to check out.