One Step Ahead

Synopsis

Thessaloniki-Greece, November 2010. Population: 1,100,000. A city with a rich cosmopolitan history of more than 2000 years, has managed to become completely unknown… The film takes place in this declining city, in a country on the verge of bankruptcy, at a time of mayoral elections. Yiannis Boutaris is 68 years old. He is an unconventional, hyperactive, successful winemaker, prominent member of the civil society and a recovered alcoholic. He is the Mayoral candidate who embodies the city’s hopes for change, against his much younger rival, the representative of a 25 years long administration. Boutaris, having fought and vanquished his own personal demons and fears, free of the pretensions of a career politician is now out to fight for and win Thessaloniki, which is drowning in a claustrophobic sea of conservatism and administrational maladies. The camera observes him intimately through the 10 weeks of a pre-election battle, and captures the unraveling of the tension, the joy, the moments of human weakness, the call for a change in stereotype perceptions regarding personal and social life, the political deliberations, the hope of victory. A stormy human journey, a critical political encounter, an inside view at the underlying patterns of the Greek politics and society, but also a film that tries to explore what love’s got to do with it.