“Timely” and “familiar” are the words being thrown around by viewers of filmmaker Konstantinos Antonopoulos’s 2019 short comedy Postcards from the End of the World, which seems to have made a resurgence and also won accolades at several festivals this spring.
Almost similar to reports of honeymooners stranded in the Maldives and Sri Lanka during the pandemic, the movie tells the story of a couple on a beach vacation with their children in the Greek Isles when human civilization collapses. Trapped in a seemingly dull family vacation, Dimitra, Dimitris, and their two daughters have to find a way out of a secluded island in the Mediterranean, when confronted with the unexpected end of the world.
The film won the Best Comedy prize at the virtual Aspen Shortsfest during the early days of the global coronavirus lockdown period. The movie has been drawing attention and praise as viewers see it through the lens of their current experience.
In a telephone interview from his home in Athens, Greece, Antonopoulos shared: “What we see in the film is the idea of reality collapsing for people and this feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow invading the lives of the characters. Now that’s something we’ve all experienced to a degree. So it’s become more relevant. It’s funny and it’s tragic.”
Postcards has seemingly become a festival hit, garnering attention for its absurd relevance and winning prizes from Shortsfest, Canada’s Saguenay International Short Film Festival, and several European festivals this spring.
Aspen Film is bringing the buzzy title back to streaming this weekend as it hosts nine award-winning Shortsfest films for an encore online presentation from 21-25 May.
The inspiration for Postcards came from the 2015 Greek debt crisis which broke while Antonopoulos was on vacation in the Cyclades Islands (also where he shot the film in 2018).
“The banks were closed down, no one knew what was going to happen,” he recalled. “Whatever you had in the bank might disappear. Your life could change the next day. I had never experienced that and I was observing people.”
As a Shortsfest award-winner, Postcards qualified for Academy Award consideration in the Live Action Short category. Antonopoulos is excited by the prospect of campaigning for the Oscar, even in this upside-down year for the film industry.
(Source: The Aspen Times)
