ANEMO

Greece extends to the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, with its main part being continental, surrounded by more than 2,500 islands and islets. Its peculiarity is that most of the mainland consists of mountains of rare beauty which are covered to a large extent by national parks and protected areas. The sea area borders many groups of islands, each of which is characterized by unique elements.

During the last decades, at an increasing rate, Greek nature with its rare biodiversity is threatened with looting by governments and companies active in the energy sector. Mineral mining and the degrading and uncontrolled development of wind farms on mountains and islands all throughout the country are forcing local communities to start struggles to defend nature and their lands. Under the guise of climate change, business interests act as colonialists to indigenous peoples, using every unholy means to serve the installation of thousands of wind turbines. Environmental impact studies, by deliberately neglecting the particularities of each land and ecosystem, facilitate the construction of wind farms even in protected areas or next to traditional settlements and archaeological sites. This results in the violent intervention in mountain and island ecosystems, which has irreversible impacts on the environment and alters the natural landscape.

This is exactly the danger that threatens most islands of the special complex of Cyclades, which are characterized by a unique picturesqueness. Construction companies have landed on inhabited and uninhabited islands and islets, aspiring to turn them into floating batteries and, in a few decades, into industrial cemeteries, with their residents facing the responsibility of defending their sites. But who are these people? What are their activities? How do they communicate with each other about their common struggle? Which are these places? What is the form of these landscapes which we are never going to see again as they used to be for thousands of years if these criminal plans are carried out? What is the relationship between the people living there and the natural environment? 

The ethnographic documentary "Anemo" tries to answer all these questions, by making a travelogue on some of the threatened islands, following the journey of a banner that circulates among them. Farmers, archaeologists, climbers, people in the tourism sector, artists and other inhabitants of these islands will guide us through the landscapes and we will get to know their activities in relation to their land, sea and way of life. The purpose of the film is to convey to the viewers the soundscape, the images and ideally make them imagine the smells, so that through this experience they can perceive and feel the anguish of ordinary people who are essentially fighting for life.