The documentary series "SPLENDID CITY - Athens Urban Stories" brings to light the unwritten story of the capital.

Everything’s good and we're going to have a good time tonight.. In the early 1970s, in the heart of the Junta, in one of the harshest periods of the city's political and cultural affairs, an artistic group of young National Gymnasium graduates makes its appearance, which was destined to make history and its performances to be associated with legendary names in acting, scriptwriting, directing and music. In the episode "Free Theatre", the series “TALES OF ATHENS” - Stories of the city reminds the older and introduces to the younger viewers this pioneering effort in the Athenian theatre world through archival material and the valuable testimonies of its important members. Which era marked the beginning of theatre, who participated, how it contributed in the theatrical events of those days and what was the imprint of it? Popular actors and directors of today, who took their first steps on the theatrical stage through the performances of the Free Theatre, travel us with their narratives to the time of the dictatorship, when the youth was "burning" with the desire to change the world. They remember what it meant to be a member of this radical theatre group that dared, among other things, to do group directing, collective text writing and joint decision-making, completely overturning the relationship between the producer and the theatre company, first and second names, etc. The assemblies with their endless discussions, the rehearsals in the basements of old bookstores and taverns, their first appearance in Xenia Kalogeropoulou's "Pinocchio", the arrest of Arzoglou - Maltesos at the end of the children's performance, the solidarity, support and their collective, one-time payment, which secured them the Stage in the Park Grove, with which the Free Theatre group was to be inextricably linked. "We wanted to fight back", "we wanted to do political theatre", "to make political thought an artistic act", they would say of a project whose breakthrough was great, as it was not only an act of aesthetic resistance, but it was positioned against the existing, established theatre, and its confrontation with the Junta defined its discourse. From "Beggar's Opera" and "The Story of Ali Rezzo" to "And You Comb Your Hair", "A Life of Golpho", "It Happened to Katina", "The Last Tram" and from Brecht's epic theatre to the popular revue, embracing the general public and opening up new paths of manoeuvre against censorship, the fascinating story of the Free Theatre is told in alphabetical order by: Mina Adamaki (Actress), Kostas Arzoglou (Actor - Director), Eleni Varopoulou (Theatrologist - Critic), Dr. Ilia Lakidou (Laboratory and Teaching Personnel, Department of Theatre Studies, University of Athens), Yvonni Maltezou (Actress), Petros Markaris (Writer), Leandros Polenakis (Theatre Critic - Writer), Sofia Seirli (Actress), Stamatis Fasoulis (Actor - Director), George Hatzidakis (Writer - Theatre Critic)