It is on Ascension Day that Zoe, a brilliant computer analyst, visits the National Park in the center of Athens with her daughter, Katerina. That afternoon in the park, Zoe experiences an overwhelming array of instinctive compulsions and transforms into an ancient Maenad in ecstatic frenzy, even capable of murder. Instincts and animals get loose and panic takes over.
Direction
Panousopoulos turns Athens into a pressure cooker of ancient dread.
Acting
Vanzi's physical transformation from analyst to ecstatic killer is genuinely unsettling.
Director
Giorgos Panousopoulos
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Greece's turbulent 1980s, the film channels national anxiety about tradition vs. European modernity — Zoe's office job versus her Dionysian breakdown mirrors the country's identity crisis.
Panousopoulos shot the park sequences during actual Ascension Day celebrations, blurring documentary and nightmare — those crowds aren't extras, they're unsuspecting Athenians.
GR
