Theo Angelopoulos (Athens, 1935–2012) was the author of some of the landmark films of contemporary European cinema. After studying at IDHEC (the French Film School) and immersing himself in the vibrant Parisian scene of the 1960s, he returned to Greece, where he was hired as a film critic for the newspaper Allagi , until the military junta forced its closure. In 1970, he completed his first feature film, Reconstruction , which won an award at the Hyères Film Festival and was also screened in Berlin, attracting the attention of critics worldwide. His next three films form a trilogy on the contemporary history of Greece, already revealing a discourse that would permeate much of his filmography, based on a Brechtian interpretation of the past: Days of '36, Journey of the Players , and The Hunters . With the second film, he won the International Critics' Prize at the Directors' Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival in 1975 and has since been considered a masterpiece of modern cinema.

Power is once again the central theme in Alexander the Great (1980), the story of a tyrant born of the people who is ultimately destroyed by those same people. In the 1980s, Angelopoulos began his collaboration with screenwriter and poet Tonino Guerra on what has been defined as the "Trilogy of Silence": Voyage to Cythera, The Beekeeper , and Landscape in the Mist , for which he won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In the 1990s, the Athenian filmmaker established himself as a leading figure in cinema thanks to three emblematic titles: The Suspended Step of the Stork, Ulysses' Gaze , and Eternity and a Day (for which he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes).

His last works were Eleni , winner of the Fipresci Award for Best Film in 2004, and The Dust of Time , two films that would form a trilogy about the contemporary history of Greece together with The Other Sea , a title that was left unfinished and whose filming was cut short by the unexpected death of Angelopoulos on January 24, 2012.