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The Winter AKA O heimonas
R1 - America - Indiepix Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (28th March 2016). |
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The Film
 Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film (Silver): Konstantinos Koutsoliotas and Elizabeth E. Schuch (Nominated) - Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, 2015 Nostimon Imar Award: Konstantinos Koutsoliotas (won) and Golden Aphrodite (Best Feature Film): Konstantinos Koutsoliotas and Elizabeth E. Schuch (nominated) - Cyprus International Film Festival, 2015 Hellenic FIlm Academy Award (Best Scenography): Elizabeth E. Schuch (nominated) - Hellenic Film Academy Awards, 2014 Best Supporting Actress: Efi Papatheodorou (won) - Peloponnesian Corinthian International Film Festival, 2015 Greek emigrant Niko (Theo Albanis) has been trying to maintain the illusion for his mother Hermioni (Petroula Christou) back in Larisa that he is a successful writer flourishing in London even though he is still struggling to complete a novel he began in high school. With late rent, mounting debt, and no job, Niko decides to return home, not to Larisa with his mother but to the derelict family home in the "dying" village of Siatista where he grew up before his mother took him away from his "head in the clouds" father Dimitri (Vangelis Mourikis), a hermit who was dead two weeks before his body was discovered. Despite warnings by local priest Father Chrysostomos (Andreas Andreopoulos ) – who takes a look at his hipster/dandy duds and fears for the neighborhood children – Niko moves into the ruin and is assailed by memories of his eccentric father and unhappy mother, along with ghostly and monstrous apparitions possibly spawned by his father's fantastic stories but still terrifying. While fending off calls from bill collectors and his mother who still believes he is in England, Nikos is inspired to put pen to paper by the atmosphere of the house. As the days wear on, his only ties to the real world are elderly widowed neighbor Philio (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' Efi Papatheodorou) – who keeps him fed and tries to keep him grounded with accounts that depict his father as an empty-headed dreamer – and the beguiling Eri (Vasiliki Panali) at the local internet café who he loves from afar (or at least convinces himself that he does). As Nikos further immerses himself in his father's world, he may be succumb to hereditary depression (or some other form of mental illness) or to something more sinister. An intriguing if muddled directorial debut by visual effects artist Konstantinos Koutsoliotas (Guardians of the Galaxy) –scripting in concert with storyboard artist Elizabeth E. Schuch () – The Winter is not so much a Lovecraftian version of "you can't go home again" so much as an attempt by the frustrated writer protagonist to filter his childhood memories – and the mystery of his father's life after his mom took him away – through "Dreams in the Witch House", "The Shuttered Room", and other fantastic stories (a book by Neil Gaiman is also seen among the clutter on his desk). The paranoid aspects of Niko's imagination are evident early on with the phantasmal appearances of a bowler-hatted debt collector who stalks him through London and then through Siatista, but Koutsoliotas' storyboarded direction is unable to lend ambiguity to scenes in which Nikos as a child attributes the crib death of his younger brother to a soul-sucking phantom or "imagines" that his father was forcibly subjected to exorcism by the local priest resulting inadvertently in death. As the viewer becomes swayed more and more towards the psychological interpretation, the film drags through a series of well-realized (technically) set-pieces on the way to a downbeat ending that suggests that the film was scripted from the ending backward. 
Video
Although a progressive transfer, Indiepix's anamorphic widescreen (2.42:1) encode has a subtle stuttering effect during horizontal pans and tracking shots that one usually finds in standards conversions. Despite the mid-range bitrate, the image is softish, apparently a deliberate choice as the visual effects featurette reveals the degree to which the look of the film was manipulated in post-production. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track (the end credits do not specify Dolby Digital or any other sound format). The burnt-in English subtitles are small but readable. 
Extras
Extras consist of roughly a half-hour of featurettes and the film's trailer (which is included in the "Play All" option) with discussion heavier on the planning and technical aspects than the discussion of themes or reflection on the finished product. In "Becoming Niko" (3:57), we learn that Albanis is a professional photographer had not acted before and trained with the director for over a year before shooting (like Koutsoliotas, Albanis is a Greek living in London). "Family Ghost Stories" (8:51) is an interview with Koutsoliotas' parents about the ghostly experiences they had in their abandoned family home where the film was shot. "The House/Location Video" (1:05) is some test photography of the house that shows how it looked before the moody color correction, while "Developing the Look" (1:23) shows how the film's visual style was put together out of a series of sketches and paintings, as well as some preliminary animation. The "Visual Effects" (5:37) segment is most interesting because it shows how man shots were actually shot against greenscreen with the interiors of the house as background plates, the color correction to enhance the mood, and the number of day-for-night shots. "Trigitis" (4:24) is the a music video montage set to the film's end title song. The film's theatrical trailer (2:14) is also included. 
Overall
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