Senior Citizen

I saw several interesting movies during the 2021 Veracruz World Film Festival, including this Cypriot film directed by Marinos Kartikkis, with a widower as its central character, who reminded me a lot of my late father, who did not go to sleep in hospitals, but was as stubborn as the protagonist (Antonis Katsaris is great) and also concealed under a certain air of pride his lack of information on how to handle the pain of loss. Which is not an easy thing to do... The film, however, does not incur easy whining or profiles of the typical funny or grumpy old men from the "planet Walt Disney ", but tells us how a bond of friendship is established with a nurse, a pragmatic single mother (wonderful Marina Argyridou) who discover how, night after night, this man who owns a home and has his basic expenses resolved, with time and money to even take a few escapes to bingo, prefers to sleep on a hospital bench (in the area with less movement, of course, so that he does not run) instead of in the comfortable and wide bed at home. It is a very simple film, with few characters and few elements, but it lacks nothing: it has everything in the right measure, in the right place. I'm really not coming up with a rare movie: it has been around since 2020 and has won awards in Stockholm, Cannes, Paris, Bogotá, Nicosia, Rome , Bangkok, Veracruz, and in the BannabáFest Human Rights Film Festival in Panamá. Highly recommended.