A Blast (film)

A Blast (Greek: Η έκρηξη), is a 2014 film directed by Syllas Tzoumerkas about a woman's disillusionment and revolt in the frame of the Greek financial crisis. The film stars Angeliki Papoulia, Vassilis Doganis, Maria Filini, Themis Bazaka, Makis Papadimitriou and Yorgos Biniaris.

Tzoumerkas' second feature film after Hora Proelefsis,A Blast had its world premiere at the International Competition section of the Locarno International Film Festival 2014. Praised by the international press for its visceral filming and acting, its bold content and form, the film went on to screen in over 70 festivals and to be theatrically released in many countries around the world.

A woman's violent journey to a renewed and disillusioned sense of self passes through a series of catastrophes. Following her mother's suicide after entrapping her whole family in a huge debt, Maria, a mother of three, decides to burn the forest surrounding her father's village to get money from a construction company, abandon her loving but constantly cheating and absent husband and their three children, coming to unreconcilable clashes with her always passive father, her half-crazy sister and her fascist brother-in-law. Bits of her rogue present are constantly interweaved with the days of her brighter, full of potential and sexually flourishing love past, creating the dazzling portrait of a woman and a country breaking into pieces.

A Blast was first presented as an in development project by Homemade Films and producer Maria Drandaki at the Cinelink of the Sarajevo Film Festival 2012 where it was awarded with the Eurimages Co-production Development Award. German producer Titus Kreyenberg and Dutch producers Ellen Havenith and Jeroen Beker became attached and the film was funded by the Greek Film Center, the Dutch Film Fund, FIlm und Medienstiftung NRW and Filmfoerderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. Pan Entertainment, Graal SA, Marni Films, Mamoko Entertainment, Prosenghisi LTD, and Movimento Film served as co-producers. As Syllas Tzoumerkas stated in an interview with Cineuropa, the film's production was delayed and put in jeopardy by prime-minister Antonis Samaras' abrupt shutting down of ERT, the Greek state television, however the film started production in September 2013.