The Dance of the Horses (2001)

In the villages of Lesbos, a land charged with history, ancient pagan customs survive, grafted with the Christian faith and the spirit of the Near East. From Sappho to the present day, this fascinating melting-pot conceals secrets. The Dance of the Horses by Christos Voupouras devises a tender - and ingenious - way to reveal them to us: an eight-year-old boy asks his grandmother with childlike innocence about a strange, cruel custom carried out in honor of Saint Charalambos, and the grandmother - the archetypal grandmother of all - unfolds wonderful and frightening stories, tales of faith and infidelity, like a Scheherazade of the Greek countryside. The dense and complex identity of an island and with it a whole country, as it is carved out of and survives in its ancient rituals, emerges brightly lit before the eyes of the viewer, who, for the 64 minutes of the film, becomes an eight-year-old child in their grandmother's arms.