Jason Sondhi
To appreciate The Distance Between Us and the Sky, Vasilis Kekatos’ eight-minute Palme d’Or winner, it helps to know that its appeal lies less in what it is about than in how it goes about it. Also awarded the Queer Palm in 2019, this meet-cute between two Greek strangers at a remote gas station has an unremarkable setup, but is immediately absorbing thanks to its playfully charged dialogue, charismatic performances, and unflinchingly intimate camera style.
Older than our typical selections, the short came back to mind earlier this year when researching a post collecting all of the century’s Palme d’Or winners. My affection for the film came flooding back, having first seen it as part of YouTube’s remarkable We Are One online film festival at the start of the pandemic. Yet, even though the film’s charms are readily apparent, I also remembered how the weight of its Palme win affected my initial viewing. Big prizes can color your expectations going in, and Kekatos’ short is not the sort of heavy, totemic work I imagined.
The plot itself is simple—a character, played by Ioko Ioannis Kotidis, is stuck en route to Athens, lacking the bus fare to get there. He is on a video call with a potential hookup when Nikos Zeginoglou arrives. He asks for the money he needs, and we’re off into a dialogue of seduction, salesmanship, and ultimately, vulnerability.
The simplicity of the setup disguises the ever-shifting nuance of the exchange and the exquisite interplay of Kekatos’ writing and direction with the performances. Kotidis and Zeginoglou are extremely charismatic, but the conversation is a wonderfully moving target—flitting between erotic charge and menace at first, before morphing into challenge and creativity. Bids for connection and authenticity are made, then retracted, in a playful dance that hides a somber tinge.
Returning to the film without the weight of that Palme win makes me appreciate the film much more. I think it’s a fantastic example for filmmakers just starting out, proving that you can reach the short film mountaintop without a grand concept or a big budget. Despite its elegant production, the single, isolated location and small cast suggest a movie made inexpensively. Of course, writing an exchange this compelling and finding actors who can pull it off are monumental challenges of their own, but they’re challenges of a sort that an emerging filmmaker with limited resources might reasonably imagine surmounting.
Kekatos might just be a rare talent, though. While he hasn’t broken through in a major way internationally, he has since written and directed the eight-part TV drama Milky Way, which is described by many viewers as a “Greek Euphoria”, and debuted his first feature, Our Wildest Days, at the 2025 Berlinale. Those larger canvases are a welcome development, but this short already makes a persuasive case that his filmmaking superpower lies in the small moments and exchanges that can adapt to any sort of story container.