The Dust of Time

In 1999, A, a filmmaker, receives a phone call from his melancholic daughter at the Cinecittà studio and rushes back to his Rome apartment. There he discovers a letter written in 1956 by his mother, Eleni, to his father, Spyros. The letter links his present turmoil to a past he barely knows.

In 1953, Eleni and Jacob watch a newsreel in the Soviet industrial city Temirtau as Spyros arrives. They jump onto a tram and rush to a public square where Stalin's death is announced. That night, after an intimate encounter, Spyros and Eleni are arrested and separated.

In Siberia, Eleni places her three-year-old son on a train to Moscow, where Jacob's older sister will take care of him. The child is sent away as Eleni remains behind. This act marks a long period of separation that shapes their lives.

On New Year's Eve 1973, Eleni and Jacob cross the border from Communist Hungary into Austria and celebrate the turn of the year there. After the celebration, Eleni ends their relationship and encourages Jacob to go to Israel.

In the summer of 1974, Eleni finds Spyros in the suburbs of New York and does not greet him. She learns that he is already married to another woman. The encounter deepens the burden of their unresolved history.

In winter 1974, Eleni crosses from the United States to Canada. There, she and A meet again for the first time in many years. A drives Spyros to an Ontario bar where Eleni works, and Spyros proposes to Eleni, which she accepts.

In 1999, Eleni and Spyros arrive in reunified Berlin and join their son Jacob as he visits. They all go out to the station together, a moment that unsettles Eleni as the past resurfaces.

During the same visit, Spyros phones A and learns that their granddaughter has been found. The family prepares for a crisis that will draw them deeper into Berlin’s hidden world.

The trio goes to an old building where their granddaughter has barricaded herself among addicts and vagabonds. Eleni enters the building, finds the girl, and rescues her. They return to A's Berlin apartment with a renewed sense of purpose.

After the rescue, Jacob drowns himself in the Spree river, a devastating blow that fractures the fragile reconciliation of the family and marks the end of his presence in the living world.

On New Year's Day 2000, Eleni dies. Spyros and their granddaughter look out of a window, and together they walk hand in hand under the snowy Brandenburg Gate, marking a somber, hopeful finale.