Atlas (All the Weight of the World)

Atlas, the inventive début by Thanos Anastopoulos, provides a picture of 11 lives in the Greek city. Love, pregnancy, birth, life and death slide together like a mosaic. One of the protagonists is an ageing scientist who realises that his knowledge has not provided much tangible result. As he has dedicated his life to science, only loneliness is left. A Polish migrant woman works for the scientist as a cleaner. She’s trying to build a new life with her little daughter. Her husband is missing. There are other women in the film who are lonely or sad or in mourning. A surgeon cuts into human flesh every day, but blood also occasionally flows in his fleeting homosexual contacts. Atlas is certainly not a lugubrious film, but an interesting confrontation with the complexity of the human spirit, brimming with unusual ideas and dialogues. This is juxtaposed with absurd scenes, such as the one with a truck driver who bears a fleeting resemblance to a second-rate Buddy Holly. The man with a fine hairstyle sends loving messages in colourful garb into the world, with the tailgate of his track as stage. The factor that binds together all these lives is the weightlifter who lifts the winning weight live on Greek television and floods the country with joy and unity.