Blue Star

This film was inspired by a small farewell ceremony I saw in 2014, for a Greek island ferry sold to Canada. The bit of fanfare and celebration for a ship leaving Greece during the crisis was bittersweet, and stuck with me. Farewells remind me of my mother, as this one did; of her complex, anxious goodbyes I would dread and try to avoid. I laugh when I recognise now, as a new mom, I have inherited that same anxiety to part. "Blue Star" is the story of a mother’s separation anxiety pitted against the Greek crisis. Her determination to cling to her two daughters and her boat, to control the uncontrollable at all cost, is both heartbreaking and hilarious to me. On a political level, the family in crisis reflects the socioeconomic state of Greece, while the Blue Star’s sale is a metaphor for the economic crisis; the cause for many difficult goodbyes. The tone mixes screwball comedy and social drama to interweave the personal and the political in a light- hearted yet socially realistic way.