Greece special (2): snail, sex and skateboard - new Greek cinema holds up a subversive mirror

'It's like a snail,' observes 23-year-old human-shy Marina in the wonderful Attenberg in a kissing experiment with her best friend. We have not seen such a wonderfully sobering kissing scene very often.

Yes, in the midst of all the Greek calamity, something beautiful has blossomed. A new generation of filmmakers is making us blink our eyes with boldness and inspiration. France once had the Nouvelle Vague, Greece now has the 'Weird Wave', as the phenomenon that emerged around 2008 was quickly christened. Without a doubt the most refreshing and curious European film innovation of the past decade. Creative low-budget films that retort to the insane Greek reality in often aburdist ways and that have won many a prize at major festivals.

A movement that doesn't want to be called a movement, but does resolutely do away with the Zorba complex. And in one fell swoop with the much admired artistic-political monopoly of Theo Angelopoulos, who died in 2012.

The great diversity and lack of a common manifesto make it difficult to grasp, but using a few telling examples, some kind of profile does loom.

Dogtooth: messed-up family

In December 2008, violent riots broke out in Greece after the death of a teenager by a police bullet. As if the youth suddenly unleashed all the pent-up frustration.

Barely a year later, a large group of Greek filmmakers boycotted the 50th anniversary of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, in protest against abuses in the Greek film industry.

Whether it is a coincidence that in the meantime a Greek film surfaced like we have not seen before I leave to your imagination.

Kynodontas (Dogtooth) by Yorgos Lanthimos was promptly awarded the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes. A surreal satire with traits of absurdist theatre, full of innocence, perversity and cruel games, about a family that has completely shielded itself from the outside world behind the garden walls of a luxury villa. The children there are indoctrinated with a completely botched version of reality. It could be an homage to Bunuel.

Although Lanthimos almost bullyingly declared to have avoided direct references to contemporary Greece, the temptation to see all kinds of symbolism and metaphors in it anyway is of course irresistible. Family and sex are the most obvious themes.

The riddle sex in Attenberg

'Greeks are obsessed with family,' Attenberg director Athina Tsangari explained shortly afterwards in The Guardian. 'Our politics and economy are such a mess because the country is run like a family. It's all about who you know.'

And also this: in Attenberg (2010), Marina's deathly ill father bitterly lets slip: 'We built an industry on sheepfolds and thought it was a revolution.' Besides, it doesn't get much more political in this coming-of-age drama, as alienating as it is moving, about two young women trying to decipher life as children. With sex as an enigmatic force that Marina initially fears.

Sex also turns up as a subversive factor in other weird wave films. To give the teenage son in Dogtooth his due, the father, against his own rules, brings in a prostitute from the outside world. With that, everything begins to falter.

Wasted Youth with Molotov cocktail

And then those molotov cocktails from 2008 surfaced, after all. Wasted Youth by Argyris Papadimitropoulos opened the 2011 Rotterdam Film Festival. A generational drama with great skateboarding scenes and indefinable tension surrounding a frustrated policeman and wantonly partying teenagers. When sex with a girlfriend doesn't work out, the boys just jerk off together. The skateboard kids fall a lot and bruise themselves considerably. The economic crisis is visible in the background, but it is primarily about the raw feeling of life. This makes it one of the more realistic representatives of the weird wave, just like The Blast three years later.

A Blast - smouldering fury

Lit forest fires, as recently in the news, are part of the Greek crisis. In A Blast (2014) by Syllas Tzoumerkas, they play their part in the collapsed economy just like an accidental swastika. Maria finally unleashes her smouldering rage. After her self-sacrifice for her parents and desperate sex with her usually seafaring husband, she is at the end of her rope. 'I have a ridiculous life,' she confesses in a support group. With a conflagration behind her and an unknown future ahead, she steps on the accelerator.

Looking forward to The Lobster

As mentioned, it is a casual group of friends rather than a movement, but if there has to be a standard-bearer then Yorgos Lanthimos. He has the most intriguing imagination of all. After Dogtooth, he came out in 2011 with Alps (Alpeis) about a mysterious company that hires actors to reenact deceased family members. Again, a story so strange that it forces you to think all over again.

So we eagerly await his in Ireland-turned and already well-received at Cannes The Lobster (jury prize winner). In this futuristic fatasy, singles are arrested and forced to find a partner in 40 days. If they fail, they are turned into an animal of their choice for punishment. From 22 October in Dutch cinemas.