Sugartown: The Day After

In director Kimon Tsakiris's 2006 documentary Sugartown: The Bridegrooms, he observed how, due to the lack of marriageable women, bachelors in the Russian city of Klin were going in search of a bride. The title of this, his latest documentary, suggests it is a sequel, but in fact it has an entirely different focus. In Sugartown: The Day After, Tsakiris examines the political aspects of the aftermath of the terrible bushfires on the Peloponnesian Peninsula in 2007. The fires caused the deaths of 65 people in the small town of Zacharo (loosely translated as "Sugartown" in English) and environs, and reduced 90% of the land to ashes. The dead are not yet buried when reconstruction begins. Donated emergency relief supplies pour in from home and abroad. Before long, the generous gifts disappear into a grab-bag of self-interest, thanks to local politicians. "Stealing will always be part of the Greek state," sighs one local. "Many people lost a lot, and many people will become better off." Tsakiris stayed in the area for a year and recorded how duped locals have no say against greedy, macho heavyweights. Chief among them is Mayor Pantazis Chronopoulos, who manipulates everything and everyone and likes to operate on the boundary between legality and illegality.