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Hard Goodbyes: My Father (Δύσκολοι Αποχαιρετισμοί: Ο μπαμπάς μου)

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Greece,
Germany

2002
· 113m

Director Penny Panayotopoulou
Cast Yorgos Karayannis, Stelios Mainas, Ioanna Tsirigouli, Christos Stergioglou, Hristos Bouyotas, Despo Diamantidou
Genre Drama

Elias is a 10 year old boy living in Athens with his family in 1969 and has an interest in Jules Verne's stories and in astronomy. His father, with whom Elias has a strong relationship, is a travelling salesman and his absence affects the whole family. On the eve of his departure for a long business trip he promises his son that he'll be back in time to watch the moon landing on TV together, but he is killed in a car accident. While Elias' mother and his elder brother deal with the loss in their own way, Elias refuses to accept his father's death. He creates an imaginary world, in which his father is alive. He shares fictitious stories with his friends, he sends letters to his grandmother on behalf of his father and he dreams of places like he did with him. Elias' mother and his godfather, who do everything to bring him back to reality, take him to a summer house. On the night of the moon landing Elias meets his father in his own way and comes to terms with his loss.

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What are critics saying?

Film Threat

Part of what makes the film engaging is the carefully nuanced performances Panayotopoulou gets from her actors. In particular, Giorgos Karayannis.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Bill White

Panayotopoulou casts a transcendent eye upon her downbeat subject matter, never dodging the unsentimental truth that growing up is about learning to live with the loss of those things we have loved.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Like the moving 1999 American "A Walk on the Moon," with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, Hard Goodbyes juxtaposes a family crisis with the excitement of the period before and during Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk.

The New York Times

Considering the delicate and weighty subject matter, the film's tone is surprisingly light, sometimes even humorous, which helps to balance the harsh sentiments that death inevitably brings.

Village Voice

A tender Greek drama.

Variety by Derek Elley

An involving family drama about a young boy's dreams and personal loss, Hard Goodbyes: My Father brings a light touch -- and a full measure of unaffected charm -- to potentially downbeat material.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Panayotopoulou does handle the material with sensitivity, but she relies too much on her young hero's unlikely precocity, which unwittingly diminishes the intensity of a child's very real grief.

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.

San Francisco Chronicle by John McMurtrie

A tender, gently paced coming-of-age movie whose strength is its young lead actor.

Chicago Reader

First-time director Penny Panayotopoulou's approach to the delicate subject matter is commendably tactful and tasteful--it's also underdramatized, monotonous, and short on humor.