Published: November 2015

A photographic tribute to film maker Theo Angelopoulos by Ilias Bourgiotis. Internationally acclaimed photographer Ilias Bourgiotis was in charge of the backstage shooting of Angelopoulos’s last three movies, including his unfinished film The Other Sea.

This album includes photos mostly from Angelopoulos’s unfinished film, The Other Sea. The stake has been to capture something of the enduring quality of the approach and methods of the great film director who brought back contemporary Greek cinema on the forefront of the international scene.


When I started my photographic journey into the Greek mainland, during the late 80’s, I was deeply moved by the work of Theo Angelopoulos. I was impressed by his filmmaking techniques, his long takes, his photography, the music of his films. Unseen Greece, my first album was created around that time. Since then, I had a strong desire to attend Angelopoulos to his shootings and undertake the backstage shooting. I was intrigued to capture through my lens, through my own perspective, what was going on while everybody and everything moved in preparation for a specific shot and so many things happened behind the camera. I’ll never forget his last three movies. During our first acquaintance at lake Kerkini, when he asked me why I wanted to take backstage shots, I offered him Unseen Greece: he flipped through its pages, looked at me, smiled, and went on his job… Until this last portrait I took of him, during that nightmarish evening at Keratsini, the place of his unfinished film The Other Sea.

Ilias Bourgiotis