A man writes a play, hoping that it will help him understand the dramatic events his son lived in Greece.
Following the wedding of his daughter, stone-faced beekeeper Spyros makes an annual journey from the north of Greece to the south, traveling along with his hives. En route, he meets an erratic, young female drifter, with whom he strikes up an unusual, self-destructive relationship.
It is a story of a normal, everyday Greek family that each member turns out to be wacko or gets wacko by the other members. The father is the stoic figure that accepts everything. The mother has a middle age crisis and takes advantage of her husbands inability. The older brother is a doctor of psychology and has everything under control (or believe so) and the younger brother does nothing with his life acclaiming that he is a filmmaker.
This is a series of intersecting stories. A petty crook and former lover of a lazy ingénue steals the box-office receipts from the Odeon of Herodus Atticus, on the day an important football game is also taking place. There is also the story of the half-mad mother of the ingénue who refuses to put shoes on because she believes that shoes lead people astray. An eccentric grave-digger produces a two-seater coffin for couple-victims of car accidents. The film also tells the story of one of the Odeon's cleaning women and of a watermelon that goes all around the city, pursued by a tired theater technician and his sister, who is a tour guide. The impresario conducts an inquiry after the theft, but the thief and his two associates, the ingénue and the technician, use what was stolen to set up a small theatre. Small everyday stories and comic incidents combine to create a portrait of modern-day Athens.
In Paris, the student protests of December 1986. Alice Lazard is having her own revolution, expressing herself and trying to confront a world whose aggression and hatred ignite her fierce will to live and her madness. Or so we imagine. Swept away by her colorful language, her youth, her vivacity, her humor, we remain fascinated, and yet she expresses so much despair in the slow destruction of her relationship with a man... Romain, the creator of this character, is overwhelmed by her. He projects himself into another woman, Alice Lazard, brunette, warm, and aggressive. She comes to present herself to Romain for a role in his next film, but she doesn't understand his reactions at all. All of this unfolds under the sometimes amused, sometimes irritated gaze of Jean, the film's editor.
An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.
A reporter notices an old man in a border town who may be an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously years ago.
Two Greek children embark on a journey to search for their father, who supposedly lives in Germany.
Young Giannis escapes from prison and hides in a deserted factory, with the dream of traveling far away. At the factory, a group of university students rehearse Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, and a girl from the group discovers him. The students accept him into their group, offering him a part in the play as well. One night, three young men try to destroy the props for the theatrical performance, and Giannis tries to stop them, ending up back in prison. The students manage to get him out of jail, and he embarks on a ship and leaves far away.
451 AD. Defeated by the Romans, a group of Barbarians led by their prince make a desperate attempt at losing their pursuers by going deeper and deeper into the Alpine forests.