Plot

Stavros is a somewhat unsuccessful filmmaker who teaches screenwriting at a film school in Athens, the birthplace of philosophy. Philosophizing in his own way as well, he asks the scripts to have a meaning, to have something to say and not just to tell a story. Thus, he has only a few students in his class. He loses his job just as his 19-year-old daughter comes from the island where she lives with her mother to stay with him in Athens to prepare for her university entrance exams. But she is not sure what she wants to do with her life and is searching for some deeper meaning. Stavros decides to write down all his thoughts about deeper meaning in a book. Despite his great financial need, he refuses the offer of a friend of his, a famous actress, to work on her soap opera, in order to concentrate on his philosophical book. Unfortunately, this is of no interest to any serious publisher, as he himself is completely irrelevant to academia. He is forced to pay a petty crook publisher himself to get his book published, because he thinks he has something to say. But it seems that his book is not of interest to readers either, since it remains unclaimed. Debt-ridden, he asks for a job on the soap opera, but they've found another director. Now impoverished, he moves around in deprived areas, full of refugees, where he finds unexpected support from a Moldovan sex worker, a former philosophy student, who was forced to give up her philosophical studies in her country, due to poverty. She seems very interested in his ideas, and thus his book finds its first reader. Still, he has to pay back his debts.—Stratos Tzitzis