Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists. Donate today and help bring City of Illusions to life.
 

Logline

A woman is summoned to return to her homeland and save it from a contagious amnesia by offering part of her uterus. She confronts the ghosts of a city continually reinventing itself toward the West. Moving between personal footage and traces of antiquities violently unearthed for a new subway, she discovers a parallel between the city and the female body.

Synopsis

The construction of the subway in my city took over 20 years to be hardly completed. Scientists and politicians scrambled, and often ferreted away, artifacts of significant historical value. In its long history, this city has been constantly erasing its past while gestating an ever-new self in her womb. Every time I return, I travel in time, trying to unearth the buried stories of my own past. Every time I leave, I have to grow a new self.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Anastasia Melia Eleftheriou — Director
Anastasia Melia Eleftheriou is a filmmaker and film programmer based in Paris. She studied Social Psychology before training in documentary filmmaking at the École documentaire de Lussas, and in film editing at Atelier 13 in Paris and Golden Crest Studios in New York.

A regular collaborator of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, she specializes in film programming and Greek film archiving. She has curated programs for the Forum des Images in Paris (2019–2023), the Champs-Élysées Film Festival (2023–2025) and the Syros International Film Festival (2015–2018), among others, and currently programs films for the Institut Français in Athens.

She has directed and edited several short films. Her first, By Halves, won Best Director at the Drama International Film Festival in Greece. Her work has screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Black Box selection), Côté Court and Kassel Dokfest. She also writes for film journals including East European Film Bulletin, and her texts have appeared in Cahiers du Cinéma. Her translations include Paul B. Preciado’s I Am the Monster That Speaks to You (Antipodes, 2022).

Make a donation to City of Illusions.

Contact

For inquiries, please contact [email protected].