Unfair World

With the deadpan tone of an Aki Kaurismäki film, Filippos Tsitos's Unfair World reveals a quietly absurd Athens marked by tiny rebellions, then larger ones, then, eventually, murder.

Sotiris is a police officer so numbed by the routine of taking crime reports that he's found his own method of dealing with them. When the day's work is done, he sits on a bench drinking ouzo and waiting for it all to start over the next day.

Yet everything changes when Sotiris and his old cop friend Minas decide to pay off an informant in an attempt to crack a case. Of course, they don't have enough money, so they borrow from Minas's wife, a modest homebody who's been saving up for a camper van and retirement. When the cops' plan goes wrong, they end up with a dead body, a missing envelope of cash, and one prime suspect: Dora, a cleaning woman. Dora has more problems than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unable to hold down a job, she spends her days building models and robbing convenience stores. In an effort to retain his dignity, Sotiris opens up to Dora, and finds an unexpected love in the one person who may have the key to ruining his life.

A sly dismantling of film noir slashed with accents of dark comedy, Unfair World is an unusual mixture of touching drama and pointed satire. Tsitos constructs an increasingly fascinating world here, in which well-intentioned characters pursue simple dreams, and struggle to break from their infinite loops.

CAMERON BAILEY