The Manifest

Towards the end of the regime of the brigands, Antonis Lepeniotis realized that there is a parable about a southern country that is couped by the army, in Austria, his country of choice, and in Trieste. A man sentenced to death escapes from a military prison and finds shelter with a resistance group that will prove to be the cell of the country's liberation. The oppression does not sleep. Nor is the fleeing convict the fighter of old: he is broken - wondering if the resistance can put him back together. Lepeniotis' masterpiece is a brittle allegory, so reduced to the essentials, stripped of all excess in image and sound, sparse, almost emaciated, poor - with sprinklings of fashionable frills - that every frame, every line, every word counts. Paranoia reigns.

"A political drama about the meaning of resistance to violence and despotism." Press Note, Cannes 1974 "Quinzaine des réaliteurs"