by Christos Zabounis

These days I find myself going back and forth to the banks, in a Sisyphean effort to sell a property from my family home in order to repay a performing loan that was sold to a servicer along with the “red” ones. I dare to mention my personal story because it is directly connected to the television series by Sotiris Tsafoulias. Borrowers who watch it will understand why they may find themselves identifying with the… robbers. I was a correspondent for Eleftheros Typos in Paris when I picked up a copy of the newspaper from a kiosk on Boulevard Saint-Michel, bearing the banner headline “The Heist of the Century.” Thirty-four years later, the case of that robbery remains unsolved. Recent articles by respected crime reporters have revived the original theories regarding the involvement of the Italian mafia in cooperation with domestic organized crime. It is in these “uncharted waters” that the director of The Other Me and 17 Threads, among other works, sets his narrative. Weaving his story from solid material – namely the real events surrounding the digging of a 25-meter tunnel beneath Kallirois Street – he then attempts an unconventional reversal. His perpetrators are ordinary people, united by one common trait: all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, have been victims of banking callousness. With a former employee of the Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company at the forefront – her name altered for obvious reasons – who lost her child and her husband through deceit, the series delves into the personal dramas of each of its characters, though the correct word is tragedies. It is no coincidence, I believe, that Rififi has sparked such widespread enthusiasm, nor that it may cost some sleep to our conscientious – yet amnestied – bankers.