This book narrates the story of Greek cinema from its inception in the early 20th century to the present day. It aims to clarify the material—which is vast and impressively unexplored— in order to present, beyond the specialized or the incidental, the essence: that which stands out and becomes a symbol of a general trend, a mosaic piece of a collective response.

The goal is to highlight the films themselves, the personalities behind them, the historical context, and their relevance to international trends. The book relativizes the distinction between commercial cinema and art cinema, exploring genres such as comedy, melodrama, or musicals. At the same time, it examines questions related to social class, cultural memory, and gender, offering interpretations within the broader context of domestic intellectual history and the history of ideas in Europe.

Greek cinema has undoubtedly been extremely productive and popular: for a time, it produced more films per capita than Hollywood, possibly even more than any country in the world, with years when over 100 million tickets were sold in Greece. At the same time, it was plagued by a persistent tendency towards introspection, which, however, was not accompanied by a critical self-examination but often degenerated into a childish and barren self-deprecation.

What is certain is that Greek cinema has produced many wonderful films, some of which could easily and confidently be labeled as "great films" of the European or even global standard. Nevertheless, the most significant achievement of Greek cinema—an achievement made possible by the persistent vision and moral courage of some exceptional filmmakers—was that it managed to shape and establish a visual idiom capable of capturing the Greek experience, with all its contradictions and multifaceted nature, in a cohesive visual language.