The Four Seasons of the Law

Original and funny combination of countryside legend, political parable and seasonal comedy (a new genre specially created for this occasion). The story is set in 1960 on the Greek island of Chios, which happened to be the island where the film-maker was born. At that time, law enforcement in the Greek countryside was in the hands of village policemen. They represented central authority but were maintained by the local people and kept an eye on the fields of the farmers, so they were not plundered by other poor and hungry villagers.The community of Tholopotamo had a policeman like that. When he was found dead in the field one day, it wasn’t very easy to find a replacement. The Tholopotamese promise a higher salary, which does yield a result in the short term. The seasons change at the same rate as the successors to the village policeman. No one seems able to keep the locals under control, living as they do in mythical times. Until the fourth policeman turns up. He would appear to have the necessary naïvety to join the fairy-tale world of the so-called backward villagers.Dimos Avdeliodis tells his story about the sluggish yet whimsical countryside in a pleasantly unhurried way that can be compared with the classical Georgian comedies from the sixties and seventies. A beautiful pastoral epistle.