“Istanbul story” Cinematography Vassilis Klotsotiras GSC

If memory is our gaze on the past, and past a boat sailing away to another country, then Katia’s unexpected journey to Istanbul today traps her in a chain of adventures enacted on the front of her disrupted childhood. Can she welcome back the crossed out motherland veiled in silence, come to terms with it and recover trust and hope for what is lost and possibly to be regained? Once a child refugee, with only a suitcase in her mother’s hand, the two of them alone on their way to Thessaloniki, among the thousands of Rums, who were violently deported in 1965 due to the turbulent Greek-Turkish relations of the time. Ironically, while shooting in Assos, 8 miles from Lesbos Island, we rescued an ID in Arabic floating on the Aegean before our very eyes. The past is never dead; it’s not even past. Istanbul Story is not only a story about Istanbul.