Maria Marmarinou

Based on Aristophanes's play, Athenian women band together to encourage their men to stop fighting the Spartans by withholding sex from them when they return from the front.

Makis and Litsa, a couple in their forties, pressured by financial difficulties and midlife problems, see the possibility of inheriting from their aunt as a way out of their troubles. But Litsa's sister and her husband, as well as their aunt's lawyer and his friend, an engineer, have their own plans. The bequest of part of the inheritance to charities forces them all to take a trip to their late uncle's birthplace. An unexpected event, however, upsets their plans, giving the whole affair uncontrollable dimensions.

Loxandra is a Greek mother and wife living the ordinary life of a well to-do Greek family in Constantinoupolis of the late 1800s-early 1900s, a world gone forever. Historical events intrude in the background -revolutions, palace coups, massacres, and the great upheavals of WW1 in which Greeks saw their wildest hopes fulfilled, then dashed: for a brief time Constantinoupolis itself was regained, then lost along with all Asia Minor. Through troubles great and small, Loxandra's simple optimism, belief in her Virgin Mary, and love of life carries her family past every difficulty - be it a sumptuous dinner for Easter or secretly giving away her savings to help persecuted Armenians. A representation of a time and place where all neighbors were friends, where they could cook in each other's kitchens or take shelter in each other's cellars.