Eternity and a Day (Mia aioniotita kai mia mera)

Dir. Theo Angelopoulos. 1998, 137 min. 35mm. With Bruno Ganz, Achileas Skevis, Isabelle Renauld. Angelopoulos’s death-haunted border trilogy ends with this chilling look at the failure of poetry in the face of human trafficking. Ganz stars as a celebrated writer, a terminally ill widower whose daughter has married a feckless yuppie. His solace in memories of his wife and regrets about the failures in their marriage are interrupted by an odd version of Death in Venice. He becomes obsessed with saving a little boy from living on the street or being sold to wealthy Western Europeans who want to adopt children. They travel toward the Greek-Albanian border, despite the child’s reluctance, making a final tour of the landscapes and weather patterns that obsess Angelopoulos.