How do we inherit the mistakes of our parents? How do we empty their house?

“‘Lo’ means ‘shut up’, ‘don’t speak’. I grew up hearing this word. My mother and grandmother would often say it when I approached, and they didn’t want me to hear what they were talking about.” says filmmaker Thanassis Vassileiou in his first autobiographical feature film Lo.

One year after the death of his mother, the filmmaker returns to his empty childhood home. As he states, “In the fear of losing the space that enclosed the last memories with my mother, but also an entire childhood, I began to film the now empty surfaces with my mobile phone.”

Throughout the film, Vassileiou faces the difficulties of dealing with a problematic inheritance through which he discovers his family’s history and its connection to the political past of his country. While depicting an ongoing search for his past, the filmmaker also deals with his relationship with his father and his father’s potential involvement in the Greek dictatorship of the late 1960s.

In Lo, the director shows how personal grief can entangle with collective trauma and how discovering one’s roots is more than just a personal story.

AC