Detours 3: Eighteen Greeks a week

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Follow the dead bodies – 18 each week – that travel along the mountain passes in northern Greece for cremation in another country. Hosted by Academy Award-winning documentary film-maker Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna, Diego Maradona), this is the third episode in a five-part series from BBC World Service in collaboration with Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. Detours takes us off the main roads of our lives, following people who didn’t end up where they expected.

Producer: Portia Crowe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Arsef Kupadya with the third episode of detours, a BBC World Service Sundance Institute collaboration. I'm a documentary film director. I
0:15.4	directed Sena, Amy and Diego Maradonna. I'm interested in outsiders, characters,
0:20.3	personal stories from around the world. We start out at a funeral in Greece, where after
0:26.5	death you may have to travel abroad. Here's Paul Shachro with 18 Greeks a week.
0:38.0	This is a traditional Greek Orthodox funeral procession.
0:41.0	Now we go to the monument.
0:44.0	Her grave? Yes. Her grave.
0:45.0	Normally after this ceremony they're going to offer coffee time with
0:55.0	cognac.
0:56.0	Coffee and cognac.
0:57.0	Konyak a little bed, coffee.
0:59.0	A van drives north from Athens, the capital of Greece with four bodies in the back,
1:09.1	headed for the Bulgarian border, behind in another vehicle, a family in mourning, another kind of procession.
1:17.0	Usually if you don't want a traditional burial, the alternative is cremation. But here in Greece the Orthodox Church
1:24.5	bans that for believers. There are no crematoriums anywhere in the country so if you
1:30.0	want to be cremated you have to go abroad. I'm Portia Crow reporting for the BBC and I'm riding
1:36.9	along today with Alexi a driver from Athens who happens to be Albanian and
1:41.4	makes this trip to Bulgaria at least once a week.
1:44.7	They've just lost the best friends and the relatives and they have to make this trip to go
1:49.1	to another country and make their final wis come true.
1:54.0	Demetres Yucca wants to be cremated.
1:56.0	You'll hear more from her later.
	...

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