Miss Violence 2013

On her eleventh birthday, Angeliki, Chloe Bolota, commits suicide by jumping from the balcony of her family’s apartment, a moment that sets off a long, haunting unraveling of a household already wrapped in silence. This tragedy reverberates through Angeliki’s world, which includes her grandparents, the unnamed Father and Mother; their eldest daughter and Angeliki’s mother, Eleni Eleni Roussinou; their younger daughter, Myrto [Sissy Toumasi]; and Eleni’s two other children, Philippos [Constantinos Athanasiades] and Alkmini [Kalliopi Zontanou]. The police begin a cautious inquiry, asking whether Angeliki may have suffered domestic trauma, but the family insists her death was an accident and asks to be left alone to grieve.

Beneath a public curtain of modesty, the Father projects a calm, friendly exterior while hiding a brutal, misogynistic regime at home. He strives to restore a sense of normalcy after the loss, flitting among neighbors and colleagues with a smile, yet at home he enforces a chilling control: emotions are to be suppressed, grief denied, and obedience demanded. The Father’s grip tightens as he dictates the family’s pace and mood, and the Mother, living in fear of his temper, goes along with his commands rather than confront him. The eldest daughter Eleni, the family’s matriarch in this crisis, faces sharp reproach for her private sorrow, while the others learn to keep their heads down and their feelings hidden. The family’s dynamic is a fragile façade, and the tension simmers just beneath the surface, waiting for a moment to break.

The rot at the core of the household becomes explicit as the Father is revealed to be coercing Eleni and Myrto into prostitution for money, often taking part in the abuse himself. This cycle of violence is threaded through each generation: Eleni’s routines are invaded, and Myrto endures brutal violations, experiences that deepen her pain and lead her to self-harm as a coping mechanism—a pain that the Mother tries to cover up. In a chilling confession, Myrto tells Angeliki that she and Eleni were first sold into sex when they turned eleven—an age the patriarch deems appropriate for such violence—which fuels Angeliki’s desperate conclusion to end her life rather than be forced into a future she cannot imagine.

The narrative intensifies as the Father escorts Eleni to a gynecologist, who confirms that she is pregnant again; Eleni refuses to name the father, preserving a shroud of secrecy around the child’s parentage. Myrto’s fear escalates when the Father fetches her from school to be gang-raped by two paying customers, an act that is completed with the Father himself raping her as well. In a separate moment of horror, Alkmini is sold by her grandfather to a pedophile for sex, a revelation that darkens the family’s already tremulous orbit. The weight of these atrocities becomes almost unbearable, and the Mother’s choices grow more brutal as she eliminates her husband in his sleep, a moment that momentarily signals a sense of relief and freedom.

The morning after, Eleni discovers the Father’s body and feels a flicker of relief, only to confront a new reality: her daughter Myrto, her son Philippos, and Alkmini stand in formation before the Mother, who has taken control of the household in the wake of the murder. The Mother’s command rings clear as she orders Eleni to lock the door, and Eleni complies, stepping into a role defined by her power and fear rather than by love or hope. The film closes on a stark note, leaving the family’s traumas and the costs of silence exposed for all to see, as the cycle of abuse, control, and complicity continues to echo through the walls of the apartment.

This unflinching drama delves into the corrosive impact of domination and secrecy within a family, examining how fear and obedience can perpetuate harm across generations, and how the lure of normalcy can mask a brutal reality that no one dares to confront openly.