The Charmer of Grammos, directed by Vaggelis Efthimiou, stood out among the 66 documentaries at the 3rd Greek documentary festival – docfest Halkida. Efthimiou received the Giorgos Kolozis Award introduced this year to honor the memory of the famous Greek documentary director who died suddenly a few weeks before the festival.

To shoot his film, Efthimiou traveled to Grammos in the northwestern corner of Greece, one of the wildest mountains in a country where the human presence harmonizes with nature. The director found the old man Sotiris, who had been living there for almost 80 years in primitive conditions. Sotiris starts a journey in the forest every fall in search of bees, which are becoming fewer and fewer every year. According to the director, “his knowledge of life and nature has taught him to appreciate every breath, and the endless hours in the forest have turned him into a philosopher trying to find the beginning and the end of humanity.”

The director of The Charmer of Grammos informs the audience of the importance of bees to the planet. His idea is redolent of Albert’s Einstein words: “If the bee disappeared from the face of the earth, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Makis Grigoriou, an MA student of digital documentary at Sussex University said, “For me and for most people that I talked with, the best documentary was The Charmer of Grammos. The original idea combined with the astonishing photography and the incredible landscapes of Grammos resulted in a great movie.”     

The other movies at the festival are separated into two categories: the competitive category, for selected documentaries that contest for 11 quality awards, and the panorama category, which aims to promote Greek independent documentary production and awards two scholarships to young directors.

This year, in addition to the large number of films entered, the festival also had a large number of visitors – unexpected, given the comparatively small turnout the previous two years, when the attendees were mostly from high schools and universities.