User Reviews

...a repeated comment from one of the interviewees in this strange little film from Greek writer/director Constantine Giannaris. Struggling somewhere between a docudrama and a ethnic drama, FROM THE EDGE OF THE CITY is written and filmed with gritty realism techniques that in the end adds some charm to an otherwise meandering movie.

During the Soviet Union era Greek Khazahkstani expatriates fled to Athens, Greece where they attempt to fit in to the Greek culture and society. But as with most immigrant groups there are challenges to face in trying to find their niche on the outskirts of a major city. The little town where they live is called Menidi and while the adults have learned Greek and found jobs, a group of teenagers who speak a mixture of Russian and Greek want the good things of life found in Athens yet waste away their own lives on roller-blading, petty crimes, cruising, drugs, male prostitution, and sexual and criminal exploitation by the wealthy Greeks: they want the good life without working for it.

The focal person of the film is Sasha (Stathis Papadopoulos) - the one who refers to himself as Rosa Ponds in interview. As with the rest of the cast he is a beautiful young man with many conflicts who seems to be seeking his identity. He and his friends move from drugs to petty crime to criminal involvement with prostitution (of both gay and straight forms). There are many subplots that could use more definition as the film tends to meander about the streets without direction. The boys become involved as both victims and perpetrators of abusive behavior, yet there is something in the nature of Sasha that makes us hope his life will even out.

Giannaris worked with street kids with no prior acting experience, a fact the gives a true sense of verismo to the film. Both the men and women involved are eye candy and while this film is being marketed as a gay movie, there is very little content to rank it as such - as though the Greek homophobia would not condone a popular movie to dwell on that subject.Nice eye candy for everyone, but not a lot of substance. Keep your expectations low and the movie will satisfy as a study of the problems of immigrants on the periphery of big cities around the world. Grady Harp

Part Greek, part American pop culture, part Russian, part Basketball Diaries, part Fassbinder, part pity the poor prostitute.

If it were not so incoherent (or is it deliberately so?) there is much to be admired here. This is a classy film in many ways, not the least of which is how it zeroes in on urban teen disorientation in the midst of contemporary Western affluence, combining a sharp contrast between rustic origins of an immigrant underclass and trendy cosmopolitan lifestyles. And the main characters are as compelling as those of a big budget film, in no way suggesting their non-professional origins. There is likewise an unrelenting effort to reflect the way these kids actually talk to each other and think.

But it bites off way too much in trying to include something for everyone in its audience. A little coke snorting here, a little skin there, some inchoate gayness along the way, some obvious symbolism, even a taking-a-girl-home-to-meet-the-folks number (that backfires predictably). The overall effect is close to that of a television documentary rather than a dramatic story line. Something may be lost by relying on English subtitles, but for anyone unfamiliar with Russian or Greek there is no option.

Worth a look.

"Buff and barely eighteen, Sasha lives with his mother and father in a Kazakhstan immigrant settlement on the outskirts of Athens. At night, he and his teenaged friends rollerblade through the city, where they hang out in brothels and work as male prostitutes. Every day they endure an obstacle course of johns, drug dealers, pimps and gangsters, as they try desperately to survive in a country that is not their own," according to the DVD sleeve summary. The cover notes this film, re-titled "From the Edge of the City" for English language viewers, was the "Official 'Academy Awards' entry from Greece" in the foreign film category. Understandably unrevealed is the fact that it was not, finally, nominated. It did well on the film festival circuit, however.

The film is artfully done, by writer/director Constantine Giannaris, with shaky camera shots, documentary-style interruptions, and bisexual subject matter. Star protagonist Stathis Papadopoulos (as Rosso "Sasha" Pond) handles the acting assignment very well, but he isn't given a character with much focus. After five years of tricking and drugs, one tends to spend a few minutes looking a little ragged, but Mr. Papadopoulos is always fresh-faced and perfectly toned. His chiseled chest is prominently displayed, but he reveals little explicit. The parents look ragged, though. Possibly, the key is that young "Sasha" never totally lived the street life, but just dabbled there to pal around for a quick buzz, sex, and cash. He keeps his nose clean, too.

****** Apo tin akri tis polis (11/20/98) Constantine Giannaris ~ Stathis Papadopoulos, Theodora Tzimou, Dimitris Papoulidis, Panayiotis Hartomatzidis

If you see one contemporary Greek film, make it this one. Giannaris shows great promise as a director - raw, yet sensitive, and original. The film looks at the lives of young immigrants boys from the former Soviet Union caught between the work-hard ethic of their parents and the seductiveness of the modern, consumer-driven world. These kids live on the edge and Giannaris's film has an appropriately edgy feeling. Young, these boys feel invincible even though they live on society's margins where the trappings of a designer lifestyle seem to have more value than a human life. 'From the Edge of the City' delves deep into the seamier underbelly of modern society but with a special sensitivity that does its filmmaker and its subjects credit.

This is my second or third Greek movie I guess, so I have no idea if this is the best one ever, but it is a very good one to say the least. I did not really want to see this one because I was not in the mood for a depressing hustler story or a foreign gaythemed drama, but that's not really what this movie is about. I would rather call it a lost generation movie with a lot of attention to immigration problems and drug abuse. I urge the main lead to learn English (or French) and try it abroad, because he has talent. the rest of the cast wasn't that good. Check it out if you get the chance, it's really not a gayhustler movie as the people might want you to believe

On the streets with teenage rebel, Sasha, and anything goes as we enter the hustle and bustle of survival on the edge of city life in Greece. An honest and gutsy film that never shies away or glamorizes the ugly reality of street life.

This pointless film was a complete disappointment. None of the characters is likeable in the least, so you watch what befalls each without really caring. What was worst was renting this movie at a gay owned establishment only to find that this story of male hustlers was filled with homophobic young men engaged in plenty of scenes of straight sex and not one single scene of gay sex.

FROM THE EDGE OF THE CITY, Greece's official submission for the best Foreign Film Oscar, is a multi-layered film that can likewise appeal to many spheres of society. In (homophobic?) Greece, it has been viewed as a serious study of urban angst, involving immigrant Russian Greeks avoiding any mention of the film's overkill gay content. Nevertheless, it has been a box-office success, though mainstream Greece dares not mention one of the reasons for the success is the (paid) love that likewise dares not mention its name. In contrast, the film's international exposure up to now, prior to the Oscar nominations, has been almost exclusively at International Gay Film Festivals: San Francisco and, particularly Verzaubert, which tours Germany's largest cities, including Berlin where I saw it. The American-accented openly gay director of the film (one of the few Greek professionals who has dared come out of the closet) made a point of explaining this to the all-male sold-out crowd in Berlin in late November. He made the movie as a labor of love; out of his fixation on the leading character, which, like the rest of the cast, are not professional actors, just real Russian-Greek immigrant youth. These guys' desperate quest to get ahead in the European Union's consumer-driven society leads them to crime, including male prostitution, though they themselves exploit female prostitutes. Add to those conflicts, the homoerotic overtones of these teenage guys' physical contacts, realization and open discussion of their lives as homosexual prostitutes, and the film exceeds any definition of a gay film. This is very clear. That notwithstanding, many will continue to be in denial of this, and look at the film as social commentary, as an immigration tragedy, as a generational-conflict movie. Indeed, this movie can be many things to many people.

At last. Here's a movie that does as much for the reputations of the men of Greece and Russia as "Gigli" did for the those of Mr. Affleck and Ms. Lo. FROM THE EDGE OF THE CITY details the sad and sordid lives of some young Russian émigrés who live in and around Athens and spend their time burglarizing cars, getting laid, pimping woman émigrés and prostituting themselves ("But we're not gay because we don't do, you know.... And if we do, it's only once or twice. With the same guy.") There is hardly anything here you have not seen before and better; only the Athens locale adds a little novelty--even then there's but a scene or two that's scenic. Writer/director Constantine Giannaris ("3 Steps to Heaven") offer a relatively generic 95 minutes, in which the standout moments involve how stupid, sexist and (from the looks of things) pretty much irredeemable most of these guys are. (Interestingly, the gayer the guy, the more redeemable he appears.) What really rankles is the treatment of the women. Greek and Russian males would seem to give the Italians a run for their money regarding that famous madonna/whore complex. Has life in Greece improved much for women since the time of Plato and Socrates? One has to wonder.

If I seem to be equating Russians and Greeks in this review, I apologize, but even the non-émigrés pictured here (the cab driver, for instance) are creeps. According to another review on this site, the film (a hit on its home turf) was actually submitted by Greece for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. What this says about the state of Greek movie-making, I hesitate to ponder.

The fact that the director selected mostly street kids for this film, as in _Salaam Bombay_, definitely gives it an edge. Regardless of the viewers' sexual orientation, who the prostitutes have sex with is irrelevant, as the core of the matter is why they get into and stay in prostitution, why they do drugs, and how the cycle perpetuates itself. The demise of the Soviet Union had some rather negative consequences, such as the impoverishment of former Soviet nations and the subsequent diaspora of many of their nationals. Such is the story of ethnic Greek Khazahkstani expatriates. The story is set in Athens, but it could just as well be set in London, New York, Chicago, you name it. The tale is universal. The movie is good.

It has a bit of that indie queer edge that was hip in the 90s and which places an explicit sell-by date on the visual style. Characters are uniformly apathetic and farcically deadpan. Street hoodlums in Greece wear new clothing out of the box without creases or stains. They all appear to visit the same marine hair dresser. All uniformly exhibit the same low IQ when making their dispassionate underground business deals. When things go wrong its all because they aren't real Greeks - they're pastoral sunshine boys caught in a strange night city world. Makes a big whine about disaffected immigrants but never bothers to actually investigate the problems with Russian/Kazakh/Albanian cultures. If Giannaris had the proper perspective on this project it might have made a wonderful Bel Ami production. The fleeting glimpses of toned boy-beef is the only spark in this generic small-time mobster programmer.

Self-consciously hip Wasted-Youth genre piece, the usual downward spiral of sex, petty crime, and drugs, done much better, and less pretentiously, by innumerable American Black ghetto films, here set in and around Athens among a group of transplanted Pontic Kazakhstani teens. The lads hustle their bodies, flirt with but never openly embrace homosexuality, to pay for drugs, living from one score and wad of cash to the next. Of course, the film exacts retribution so that a bad end awaits all, either in the form of arrest, severe injury, or death.

The film succumbs to the pointlessness of its subject matter; there's nothing particularly profound, compelling, or even remotely sympathetic about its cast of bored, directionless, and none-too-bright loafers who do nothing but selfishly chase after money and pleasure, unscrupulously screwing each other over to fulfill the pettiest of desires. There are no big dreams, no big hearts, nothing much gained or lost.

The film tries to make up for lack of content with self-conscious flourishes of style, relying heavy-handedly on a trendy soundtrack of techno-house and dilute hip-hop, fast-forwarding the frame rate, fooling around with aperture settings, conducting mock interviews with the main protagonist for a pseudodocumentary effect, and even at one point resorting to a totally gratuitous quote from Goddard's Contempt.

It seems Europeans are now fashioning their version of a very old American genre, the lower-class-self-destruct-coming-of-age story. Except for the empty stylistic intrusions, there is hardly any difference between this movie and Erick Zonka's Le Petit Voleur (The Little Thief, '99). By an odd coincidence--talk about unoriginality--the wayward boys of both find their first criminal employment by baby-sitting a whore, both even going so far as to disastrously double-cross their pimp bosses.

Not that the Americans aren't busy recycling this same old trash: try Requiem for a Dream.

It seems a huge rift has opened up in film between mainstream morality, on the one hand, and underworld noirish voyeurism, on the other. One can either go see a squeaky-clean, soft-core, Cellophane-wrapped, light-hearted goodie like Charlie's Angels, or a dark, damaged, doomed (increasingly imported) perversion like this. Talk about specialized, fractionalized markets.

Let me tell you a story.

One day on the streets of Athens a film director bumped into a male prostitute and decided that the world just HAD to know his story because...you know... he's deprived...and he takes his shirt off a lot and...so on.

This film is the result of his revelation. Repulsive, depraved, homophobic, misogynist...but of course filled with pretty guys with their chests showing. If this is your idea of a good film then enjoy, if not avoid it like the plague.

It's put me off ever going to Greece that's for sure.

I hadn't heard of any of the actors or the director before, but I decided to buy the DVD when I read about this movie, and the fact that it was from Greece turned me on even more. Turns out it was a good idea, the movie was fabulous, the poor suburb home setting is perfect, and the cast is awesome! It is NOT a gay movie, I as a straight guy enjoyed it very much. But several scenes in the movie hit you like a slap on the face, so it's only for people with strong hearts. All in all, it's a marvellous film, and it's plainly impossible to understand why it has such a low rating. It deserves at least an 8/10. Well done gitona!

If you enjoy watching characters that you could not care the least bit about, watch them smoke, use drugs, smoke, use drugs, smoke, smoke, smoke, throughout the movie, in every single scene, well, that's your action. The scenes could be in reverse order and it wouldn't matter. There's nothing to see, to figure out or to care about...just watch them smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke...Oh! how daring! How edgy!

it seems to me that "from the edge of the city" is that type of film which is bound the audience to think.yeah,the movie is complex to understand but i admit that it is really a brilliant movie.

the plot of the film concerns with those people who are Greek-Russians bound to leave their country for former soviet-union in Stalin era. after the demise of the soviet-union they came back to Athens and try to mix with the mainstream society.

the movie tells the story about those third generation young people,the Greek-Russian teenage who are trying to live in this Greek society.we know their way of living through an interview of one teenage named "sasha" who tells us how they use drugs, how they sell their body, their relatinons with their families and their views to the society.

this movie seems to one type of documentary movie about modern Greek tragedy.

it is definitely not a movie for all audience but i like that film.

i would like to rate this movie: 8 out of 10.

I had heard about this movie from one of my greek students who had said it was disturbing but very good. I found the imagery of the marginalized immigrant's experience very moving and sad. The whole film is very well acted and beautifully, if rawly, filmed and portrayed. Sacha, the main character is brilliant and totally believable. I highly recommend this film.

What is a nation? According to Benedict Anderson it is a community socially constructed; an imagined community, indeed. In order to be Greeks or Russians one must first share these imaginary narratives that set apart one people from the other. Cohesiveness must come after everyone commits to this exercise of the imagination. What happens, however, with young men like Sasha and his group of friends? Raised in Russia and then transferred back to the land of their progenitors they feel neither Russians nor Greeks. They have been expelled out of any possible narrative of integration, and instead they are lingering on the edges of the city, on the marginal borders that preclude them from obtaining full status citizenship.

Unable to fit in, these youngsters cannot be a part of the symbolic order. Society has banned them and as a consequence they partake in illegal activities. Some of them are good at stealing, others at prostituting themselves. But then again, since being a hustler is the most profitable activity most of them try to gain the favor of other men.

Sasha is a boy struggling with his own identity. He is heterosexual and he falls in love with a common whore. However, the only way he can make money is by participating in the same activities his friends do. If identity is defined throughout adolescence, it's very revealing witnessing this group of kids coming to terms with what they do. They're 18 or 19 years old and some of them affirm that everything is alright as long as they assume the active role in homosexual intercourse. Others, more lucidly, realize that it doesn't matter who penetrates who, all that matters is that sex is taking place.

Nonetheless, the kids cannot let go of social conventions, after all, identity also depends greatly on how one pictures oneself. Our own images also depend on the gaze of the other. But since all of them are estranged from imaginary narratives since the very beginning, they find it difficult to find their place into the world. One can only wonder if at least one of them will be able to step aside of the vicious circle of poverty.

I saw this fantastic movie yesterday night and I want to watch it again and again. It's a non commercial film, not American (yeah!!!!!!) and it's REAL. The non professional actors give a feeling of reality and give to the audience their experiences and feelings as they act like themselves. I recommend this film for everyone that wants to see something genuine.

It is an exceptional movie. Amazing high quality performance depicting the truth. Something that you don't often meet in Greek cinema. Reminded me a bit the movie "Kids" by Larry Klark. Also a masterpiece!!!

Greece needs to produce more movies like this and not cheesey copies.. We need original ideas. Depicting truth and outstanding natural performances. Right now the taste in movies is so lame. Sometimes they act as if they play in the theater. Talking loud making too many gestures and the directors shouldn't use so much backround music in the making. It makes movies too tiring and less classy.

Revisited again since I first watched it when it came out. Being older now, I can fully appreciate the craft and artistry of this movie. Multi-layered immigrant angst. Sexy and sad. Beautifully shot, great editing, firmly directed. If you don't speak Greek and you aren't of immigrant background a lot of subtext will be lost on you.