The Cinematheque

“You have to watch The Shepherds of Calamity, it’s just the most amazing film … It takes place in a village and it’s a bit bucolic, but so absurd and modern at the same time … You couldn’t believe that this film was made in Greece back in the ​’60s.”

Yorgos Lanthimos

A prosperous landowner seeks to marry off his heiress daughter to the groom of his choice. But she—along with the community at large—has other ideas. A surrealistic satire of Greek village life, mores, and morals, Shepherds weaves the many clichés and tropes of Greek culture with humour, empathy, and a critical eye worthy of Buñuel. Confidently directed by underappreciated Ethiopian Greek auteur Nikos Papatakis (Les abysses, The Photograph), whose work and sensibilities influenced the Greek Weird Wave, Shepherds is an original, sharp, and gutsy masterwork. ​“Infused with echoes of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt … Because of its transgressive, provocative content and its explicit references to the coup (through a radio broadcast), The Shepherds of Calamity was banned in Greece until the dictatorship’s collapse in 1974. This interplay of fiction and reality permeates all of Papatakis’s work” (Yonca Talu, Film Comment).

In Greek with English subtitles

Restored DCP courtesy Gaumont