The Wretches Are Still Singing (1979) poster
1979 · cult · drama · music

The Wretches Are Still Singing

Directed by Nikos Nikolaidis2h 3m1979
ElsewhereIMDb7.31kTMDB7.316
  • heavy
  • measured
  • intense
  • inventive
  • bleak
Movie DNA

Heavy, measured, measured cult / drama, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Five friends (representatives of the Fifties generation) now in their forties, get together after many years of silence. One shows up from jail, where he has been entering and exiting for years, the other comes from a series of "accidental" murders, another leaves his wife and kids, the fourth one is a wonderer, and the last one, the girl of the gang, comes from a lunatic asylum where she has been hiding for years... All of them are outcasts, tortured from barren love affairs, wounded from the deaths of their beloved friends and betrayed by the politics of their times. They hopelessly try to reconstruct the gang of their puberty, but the revolution is lost... Now, each in his own way, will progress into a journey of death, thus opening a new chapter in the history of their generation.

Our read · The Wretches Are Still Singing (1979) reads as a heavy, measured, inventive cult · drama · music entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Where to watch
Not on streaming here right now.Check JustWatch Check Letterboxd
More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of The Wretches Are Still Singing

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want surreal Greek underground about misfit friends and post-junta disillusion.

ends unsettlingit stays with youmeditativegrips by minute 30attention 4/5feels its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if experimental 70s art film with loose dark structure will frustrate you.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself