Series of half-hour documentaries on various neighborhoods of Athens.

Each neighborhood corresponds to an architectural concept-word that characterizes it both physically and socially. This word serves as a guide in the perspective, the selection of characters, and the elements of each neighborhood's portrait.

Exarcheia of challenge, Kolonaki of aristocracy, Omonia of the marginalized, Kypseli of immigrants, Kaisariani of refugees, Kifissia of decentralization, Aspropyrgos of the industrial zone, Paleo Faliro of memory, Akadimia Platonos of glorious past, Ekali of the elite, Ilion of denial, Perama of shipyards, Olympic Village of youthful dominance, Gerakas of anarchic development.

Historical and new neighborhoods of Athens reveal their true nature through a conceptual game with the words that architecturally and sociologically characterize them, the people who inhabit them, and the position they claim in the new cultural map of a city that stubbornly refuses to acquire a specific identity, constantly balancing between its heavy past, transient present, and uncertain future.

Three young directors - each with their own perspective - discover the keyword of each neighborhood, overturn their apparent dynamics, renegotiate the image bestowed upon them by "urban myths," and unlock what lies behind the captivating everyday life of its inhabitants, thus completing the re-mapping of a familiar "unknown" city in the most transparent manner.

Series of Half-Hour Documentaries
Attempts at a personal reading of metropolitan Athens.
Seemingly arbitrary verbal starting points construct an introduction to different neighborhoods. Within this framework, using the key word, the concept, and the enlightening condition of "underground," director Persephone Miliou enters the labyrinth of one of the most densely populated micro-cities in the world: Kypseli.
Four underground spaces intertwine and dictate the historical and social journey of Kypseli from the first settlement during the Interwar period and the urban boom of the '60s and '70s to its current multi-ethnic identity.
A silk refuge during the bombings and an occupied neoclassical building, serving as a shelter for illegal African immigrants, connect the underground worlds of yesterday and today. In the third underground space, the warm, playful coexistence of a dog groomer and a Bangladeshi migrant breaks the darkness in the prospect of a normal life at surface level.
And throughout this polyphonic song from the Underground, constant from beginning to end, two male voices hold the narrative. Who are they, and what do they know about the underground? Listen to them, and you will see that the view of the world from below upwards is richer in images than you might imagine.