Souls of a River

SOULS OF A RIVER follows a traveller back through the landscape of memory along the Evros River, where water, reeds and empty roads become a terrain of return. Moving as a stranger in his own country, he searches for the self that once left this border region behind. The search brings him to a forensic doctor who works in the river itself, recovering the traces of people who died while trying to cross. From a brown envelope come a cross, a ring and a wristwatch; elsewhere, unidentified bodies remain only numbers in a file. The traveller and the pathologist then move through the places of their childhood, where broken inflatables, nameless graves and decaying houses quietly mark what has vanished. The film links these personal memories to emigration, the search for a new home, economic crisis and the policies shaping the European Union border. Chris Krikellis weaves different time levels together to build a fragmented portrait of a region divided by departure and loss. Questions about what is legal, what is illegal, and where human boundaries lie give the film its moral force without reducing it to easy answers. As a documentary essay, SOULS OF A RIVER combines observation, reflection and the presence of Chris Krikellis in the role of the fictional traveller. It was awarded as Best Documentary at Diagonale 2023. SOULS OF A RIVER is a precise and unsettling work.