This film was shot over a period of three years in the city of Athens. It is the execution of a really simple idea. We wanted to portray the tribes of the night during this city’s turbulent times.

Sodium Nights aspires to unveil the real underbelly of a metropolis in transit.

Director’s Statement

It was a typically warm August night and we were driving around the city aimlessly and blissfully in our AM solitude. It was almost dawn and as we were heading towards the industrial zone, we saw a man on the other side of the road . Walking on a ring road at this time was rather strange but the man was even stranger. Mid-fifties, thinning grey hair and a ponytail, covered in mud head to toe. With him, he seemed to be dragging something rather large that we couldn’t see from a distance. Curious and with nothing better to do, we decided to have a closer look. So we took the next U turn hoping to see him again.

A few minutes later his silhouette became visible. Still walking slowly on the side of the road. And still dragging what now revealed to be a large, white, plastic Christmas tree. And at that moment, as we slowed down to take a closer look, we became aware of our own presence. Two dudes in a car approaching a lonely man from behind. Conversing with him would be almost impossible without scaring him or messing with his own AM solitude. Or at least, that’s what we thought at the moment. So we left. And never got to know the story behind the man. All we had was an impression of a story.

Sodium Nights is a project that came to be because of many incidents like this during endless nights of driving. Over time we developed a real fascination with the people that inhabit those late hours and their often enigmatic stories. We got to know them and even filmed some of them, always retaining a feeling of a fragmental storytelling, a loose narrative, kind of like the feeling you get when driving around aimlessly at night.