News

KYUKA – JOURNEYING TO THE MOON THROUGH THE ENDLESS SEA

Country: Greece
Directed by: Kostis Charamountanis
Producer: Danae Spathara
Production Company: Heretic
Release date: 2022

“The Feature Launch program gave us the chance to work in deep detail on our project, within the creative environment of MIDPOINT and under the guidance of a very experienced group leader. The progress on the script development of Kyuka is remarkable. KVIFF is a prestigious festival and we are looking forward to the festival feeling, especially in this unique covid situation.”
Kostis Charamountanis, Danae Spathara

Film synopsis
A single father and his two mischievous adult twins take the family sailboat out for their yearly summer holidays; it’s an opportunity to repair their fragmented relationship, which lacks mutual respect. Upon arriving on a Greek island, the father befriends a man who is docked nearby and the twins come across a little girl who has just lost her mother. Through this incident, the twins unknowingly meet their birth mother, who had abandoned them when they were babies. Their father soon realises that the man whom he befriended is married to his ex-wife. The father becomes vulnerable and mad. He lures the man and his family over for dinner and takes revenge on his ex-wife by exposing her to her new family and the twins. Overwhelmed, the twins violently escape their father’s grasp. They separate and emerge as individuals, as they realise they want different things in life.

Author’s statement
Kyuka - Journeying to the Moon Through the Endless Sea is inspired by real events and people. It is a story immersed in an overwhelming summer – the Greek summer, the way I remember it as a kid, with its suffocating heat, the buzzing of cicadas and vast blue sea. An exaggerated portrayal of summer, a metaphor which emphasizes the primordial human madness hidden beneath a thin layer of ice, compressed by contemporary society. This human pathos is embodied by the father, a patriarch figure that eventually proves his vulnerability as he sinks into this madness. The landscape is the stage for the journey each character takes, a journey to substantial maturity, a story of adulthood. Poetry, surrealism and humour blend in with the main dramatic plot, communicating the core theme of the story which develops as an experimental, spontaneous and handcrafted film full of true images and vivid imagination.

Producer’s statement
Kostis Charamountanis drew Heretic’s attention with his short Kioku - Before Summer Comes, which won the Motive Award at Drama International Short FF and the Best Director Award at Athens International FF. His shorts impressed us with their wild, original and sensitive nature. Reading the first draft of Kyuka - Journeying to the Moon Through the Endless Sea, we were surprised by the authenticity of the project, as Kostis had created a poetic universe full of unexpected ideas both on a visual and narrative level, underlined by an emotional undercurrent that roots his film on a deeper level. Kyuka - Journeying to the Moon Through the Endless Sea is a story about adulthood that takes place on a sailing boat. Greek summer forms the film’s setting, where reality and dreams merge, creating an idiosyncratic universe. We are currently working on the development of Kyuka - Journeying to the Moon Through the Endless Sea at the MIDPOINT Institute, waiting for national funding results and looking for co-production partners to join us on this journey.