Little England

Set during the 1930’s on the Greek island of Andros, a Cyclades archipelago with a long history of military embroilment and seafaring turmoil, Little England is not only he title of this film but also the name of a symbolic enterprise introduced to the viewer as the story progresses. The opening scene of rolling ocean waves and crashing surf is ominous of the film’s schedule of turbulent events. 20 year- old Orsa (Penelope Tsilika) is passionately in love with second mate Spiros Maltabes (Andreas Konstantinou), a secret she dares not reveal anyone, least of all her domineering mother, Mina. Her energetic younger sister, Moscha (Sofia Kokkali), is determined to leave Andros and escape the typical woman’s fate on the island marrying sailors, who are the mainstay of Andros’s economy and constantly absent due to their seafaring duties. Mina (Anneza Papadopoulou), herself the wife of a captain who prefers the Atlántico Sur over his home, constantly ponders the reward for a life of blind marital faithfulness and inadvertently attempts to pass her beleaguered logic onto her daughters to protect them from heartache. Without the slightest consideration of her daughters’ desire to marry out of love, Mina conspires and uses her societal connections to wed her daughters off to the wealthiest suitors Andros has to ofer Orsa to ship owner and captain Nikos Vatokouzis (Maximos Moumouris) and later Moscha to the very man she rejected as a potential husband to Orsa, Spiros Maltabes, who returns to the island as an accomplished captain after spending years in the lower rankings of the ship’s hierarchy. The devious Moscha wastes no time torturing her sister with vivid descriptions of the intimate moments with her new husband, for whom Orsa still harbors deep feelings. A final tragedy later seals the fate of the family as the story progresses into the throes of World War 2, the events of which do nothing to make hauling cargo on the high seas any safer.