Stranger in a strange land

 A long-lost hero returns home in Alexandra Anthony's captivating documentary ‘Lost in the Bewilderness’ Meeting yiayia. Filmed over the course of 30 years, Alexandra Anthony's family documentary is a mixture of archival footage and cinema verite.

By Harry van Versendaal

Not everyone's home videos have the makings of a modern-day Greek tragedy.

Alexandra Anthony's family documentary “Lost in the Bewilderness,” which earned warm reviews at the recent Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, tells the story of a long-lost hero who, after many travails, finally returns home to claim his rightful place in the old country.

The story begins in the early 1970s, at the house of the Psychopaidopoulos family in the southern Athens neighborhood of Nea Smyrni. When Anthony's cousin Lucas is born, he is instantly immersed in the typically Greek overdose of attention and affection bestowed upon the first male child of a generation. But at the age of 5, Lucas's parents separate.

That is when the drama begins to unfold, and the story is elevated from Super-8 home movie memories to something darker. One day the boy disappears with his mother, throwing the Psychopaidopoulos family into a state of shock and mourning. A worldwide search, also with the help of Interpol, is of no avail.

But 11 years after the abduction, a telephone call from Maryland in the US sets the drama back in motion. It's Athena, asking Orestis, her former husband, to take impossible teenager Lucas back to the homeland and off her hands.

“When the kid was found, it was like, 'Get the camera and go,’” Anthony says.

Live your myth

Filmed over the course of 30 years, the 97-minute documentary is a mixture of archival footage and cinema verite. It takes off...