Casus Belli
2010 · 11m · Grèce
Directed by Yorgos Zois
Genres: experimental, satire
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, surreal
People of every nationality, class, gender and age queue in seven lines; as the first person in each line becomes the last of the next, a giant human chain forms — and at the end of the queue, a countdown begins.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A countdown timer at the end of a human chain made of every demographic imaginable—it's absurdist political theater that doesn't announce what it means, which is exactly why it works. Zois commits to the bit with such deadpan surrealism that the satire lands harder than anything pretending to have answers would.
The formal rigor of the premise—seven lines collapsing into one continuous chain—recalls Brechtian staging and durational performance art, positioning itself in a lineage of conceptual cinema that uses structure as argument. Zois sustains the conceit with admirable compositional control, though the countdown's implication remains deliberately opaque.
The decision to fill those seven lines with genuine demographic specificity rather than treating them as abstract units transforms what could be a gimmick into something that actually *means*—it's the casting choice that does all the work, making the human chain feel inevitable rather than imposed.
Reviews
Par le biais de la métaphore, le film croque avec dérision et pertinence la crise économique grecque, le consumérisme globalisé, et l'interaction entre l'individuel et le collectif.