Plato's Academy

Ακαδημια Πλατωνος, a modern Greek movie with the English title “Plato's academy” was published in 2009 by Filippos Tsitos. The film received multiple awards at the International Film Festivals already and deals mostly with one more serious topic – identity crisis.

 The movie tells the story of one man – Stavros – which is the owner of a cigarette shop in Athens. Together with his friends he sits around his store the whole day, chatting and complaining about foreigners, mostly Albanians. Even though they do hard work, Stavros has a lot of prejudices against them. Stavros in person was left by his wife and now has to take care of his old mother, helping her with the household, and works in his cigarette shop all day.

 Suddenly, from one moment to the other his life changes completely. Returning home to his mothers house, an Albanian man is waiting in the kitchen, surprising Stavros by telling him that he recognized his own long-lost mother - the mother of Stavros. Trying to deal with the fact that he is originally Albanian he goes through an identity crisis, not knowing how to deal with his new origin.

Even though the movie deals with a serious topic, still it is made with a lot of humor. One of the most important morals is, that no one should have prejudices against people of different origins and that it is important to always stay open-minded. Nobody knows what will happen one day, maybe everything changes in one minute of a person's lifetime and later they will regret their behavior.

I invite you to watch it.