City of Lost Souls

The idea for this film, City of Lost Souls, derived from my personal struggle to adapt to a new country and the story of my friend Nike, who was dealing with losses in her personal and family environment. She shared with me how painful and difficult it was for her to find a new purpose in her life and gain the strength to see light again at the end of the tunnel. At the same time, even though I had moved to Berlin with a lot of enthusiasm, after a few months the main feeling I had was desperation. While our situation was quite different on so many levels, we both had a mutual understanding of what each of us was going through. That inspired me to create the story of Elpida. A young middle-class woman from Greece, moved to Berlin, a place that a lot of Eastern Europeans have in their mind as the promised land. Things have not gone as she expected and she seems out of hope. However, her interaction with Lumi, a teenage skater girl, while at first creates problems for her, as the story goes on, she discovers that there are people, who go through similar tough times and empathy may be the answer to urban desperation.