Plato’s Academy

Stavros and his three chauvinist friends hang out in front of his ill-frequented store at a peaceful square in Athens, while uttering condescending remarks about Albanian and Chinese people walking by. Their routine is disrupted when Stavros’ mother recognizes an Albanian worker as her lost son. What does this mean for his nationality? A Greek tragic comedy about xenophobia.

Seated on plastic chairs along the sideway, the four men, sucking noisily on a straw, comment on everything that goes on at their square. On the other side of the road, to their delight, a dog barks at every Albanian national that walks by. They demolish a monument for intercultural solidarity, placed in the middle of the junction. One thing is clear: they are not too fond of foreigners.
A few yards away from them sits Stavros’ old mother, with a bored look on her face. She recently suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and is confused. When one day she takes an Albanian building worker for her son, Stavros believes she has gone insane. Doubt sets in, though, when his mother turns out to speak Albanian fluently. That turns his world upside down.