Apples

Are we the sum of the images we compile and display of ourselves, or are we something richer, and deeper? That’s the question at the heart of the allegorical comedy-drama Apples.

Amidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, a man finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help him build a new life. His treatment: performing daily tasks prescribed by his doctors on cassette tape and capturing these new memories with a Polaroid camera. The film evokes a sense of memory, both in its 4:3 screen style and its setting in a nostalgically analogue world, as it introduces alluring questions of selective memory – and selective forgetting. Through images deadpan, strange and surreal, Greek writer-director Christos Nikou has created a beguiling reflection on memory, identity, and loss, exploring how a society might handle an irreversible epidemic through one man’s story of self-discovery.

Apples is among the very best of new Greek cinema, and reminiscent of Nikou’s collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos’ films Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Favourite.