In PHILOCTETES, We follow an immigrant refugee from Sierra Leone seeking asylum in Greece, scenes of him roaming around the broken city of Athens, while he awaits for his papers. Like him, many more refugees wait for days, months, perhaps even years to obtain the permission that will validate him, in the eyes of the Greek, as a person of worth. A man with no country, in a country with an identity and national crisis. In the background, the myth of Philoctetes by Sophocles is narrated, playing against the images, it's as if the story was being brought to life by today's current events, word for word. The Myth is brought to life, almost like a recurrence.
The documentary shows us scenes of a man that seeks refuge in a country that has just suffered an economic crisis, and Greece is perhaps the least ideal country to seek refuge. It's an irony, then. "Give us your sick and tired" The Americans would say, and yet the country seems to be sick and tired itself. According to myth, Philoctetes has gone on to fight in the Trojan War, seeking to retrieve the Spartan princess Helen for Menelaus. Philoctetes became stranded by the Greeks on the island of Lemnos, for many years. Like in the Greek Myth, our Sierra Leonian has become stranded as well, awaiting until the Greeks decide to set him free.
It's an excellent idea to compare Myth with reality, particularly under the circumstances being strikingly similar to anyone who knows the myth well. And to use it to show the conditions in which refugees live in Greece while the country itself tries to get up from a most devastating economic crisis. We believe that while the Doc doesn't delve into details, it's more about the sensation of being stranded, rather than interviews and plots, it's the feeling of abandonment that this documentary sells.
PHILOCTETES uses the Greek Myth to relate it to an immigrant's plea for asylum in Greece, who like the titular character of Mythology is stranded, forever awaiting for resolution.