Original subtitles

So,

we're in 1904,

and the government decides to lock them up.

That's it.

The police has them arrested all over

and sends them to the Spinalonga island...

There... On the side of Crete...

For them to end their days there.

In isolation...

A danger to society.

So,

they get themselves installed there,

they organize their lives.

Even under such conditions,

even when you know the reason why you're there,

to croak...

you want to get your life organized.

And it lasts for 50 years.

50 years of imprisonment on this island.

All of a sudden

one finds a way to fight the disease.

The men aren't condemned any more,

it's possible to make new projects...

So,

no reason to lock them up anymore.

So, in 1956,

everybody is moved away from there

and taken here, to this station

close to Athens

So that they can get prepared to return to the world.

But that's the thing...

They're not returning to the world.

I forbid you for the rest of your life

to enter churches, markets, mills,

public places... Every place where people gather.

Likewise,

I forbid you to ever wash your hands

or other parts of your body

in the water of fountains or any other place of running water.

Likewise,

I forbid you to enter taverns or other houses.

if you want to buy wine or accept something that's offered to you

make sure that people put them straight into your basket.

I was imprisoned 36 years ago

without having committed any crime.

Many people came to see us over the years.

Some came to take photographs,

others had a more literary point of view,

being in search of a different kind of people,

several shot film recordings...

Alas, until now,

they have all betrayed us!

Nobody passed on what we wanted them to

or what they had promised to show the world

Just a deceptive photo,

and an accompanying text

which modified the truth and betrayed us.

And this hurt us because some wanted to show

compassion, others repulsion.

But we,

we don't want people to detest us

nor to have pity for us.

All we really need is to be loved.

Loved as someone who has had a misfortune,

and not as a phenomenon,

a different human species,

because we are also men

we have the same dreams.

We don't want to be classified in a world apart,

different.

I don't know what will come of this,

I don't know.

The fear...

of them... what it represents...

One had it without having ever seen them.

Or rather...

Those who taught us to fear them had never seen them.

So...

I ask myself if,

although you come from far away,

I ask myself if you will pass on the truth

or if you will cover with lies what you have shot

to use it for who knows what goal,

who knows what ideas...

When do you become leprous?

When you get the sickness?

No.

Rather when it starts to become visible!

So...

Imagine when it starts getting visible...

People denounce you.

Two policemen come to take you away.

Two policemen, with handcuffs.

When it starts to show...

And you are brought here...

To stay forever...

In prison...

For...

For what reason?

To make sure you won't infect others.

Do you think that death is contagious

when it starts to show?

We are staying in doubt,

until the opposite has been proved,

to whether you are sincere or not.

There is a cure for leprosy now.

Leprosy...

Or at least... it can be stopped...

Leprosy...

So, you receive a treatment...

You get better...

You are no longer leprous?

No, they say.

They say :

You don't stop being leprous.

Even though no trace is left, even though the sickness hasn't destroyed you,

for life...

With you leprosy put to a halt.

Because it is kept away.

because it keeps us away.

Maybe.. because it keeps itself away.

In any case,

it stay like that the rest of your life.

But... anyway...

the remedy...

it stop the sickness from advancing,

it stops up the destruction of the body, right?

The destruction of the body...

Yes, the destruction of the body...

The destruction of the body.

Why seek out the leprous?

To talk about what?

It's not the same thing anymore.

The newcomers don't want to have anything to do with this place.

They look at us as if we were mommies.

They think that we were born like this.

They come here

and already they think about leaving.

Get well and get away.

That's all they think of.

They're not even accepting to be considered leprous.

They have hopes, these newcomers.

Death...

on Spinalonga,

everything was turned towards death

because the idea of creation was absent.

One went to Spinalonga

knowing that it was to die there,

all hope gone.

Because of this,

we differed very much from other people

who thought about taking care of their kids,

to make a living.

We on the other hand, were mostly concerned

with getting prepared to die.

Our soul turned cold as a consequence.

And, as we said in the language we employed there,

we said " That one has died,

he found rest".

Of course, the communal life,

the martial life that most of us lead there,

brought sorrow and tears

when death occurred, just like

it happens between you unpolluted people.

But these sentiments rapidly disappeared,

because the wife or the husband of the diseased

knew that his or her turn to pass on.

was coming soon.

So...

The cure has come.

They asked us, what do you want?

We told them: Nothing at all...

May we all, living and dead, depart from here,

both living and dead.

When you leave this hospital,

hoping to regain your place in the world,

by your dear ones,

and you realize that they're not expecting you,

that people avoid you won't employ you

of course, this comes as a surprise...

Then, you understand...

And after that you too say:

It would have been better not to leave.

You know, the life on the island, was like the one in a quiet village...

You decided how you wanted things to be...

Here it's the opposite.

We live in common rooms,

the staff takes care of everything.

As in a hospital...

The food... everything.

Spinalonga... wasn't like that.

The opposite of Spinalonga

where you were your own master

and we decided on all matters ourselves.

No...

No. After all...

the time when the leprous were locked away

One feared the danger of contamination.

One could say that it was justified...

considering what one knew about the illness...

With no cure at hand...

It was the only way to avoid any contact...

It was the most reasonable choice...

A sanitary measure.

Nothing else.

To protect the uncontaminated.

To protect the uncontaminated.

They could no longer vote. They lost their civil rights.

Moreover, on the island, they had their freedom.

They got married, they even had children,

who were taken away and placed in an orphanage to protect them.

But...

It was like you were dead?

Yes, I was crossed out.

The sickness... When someone got ill,

he was erased, removed from the village registry.

which was what happened to me...

And all this, this is a thing of the past, isn't it?

Now we have the cure, people aren't locked away anymore,

people leave as they please... in a hospital...

They leave or they stay as they wish.

They are free.

They're not wanted back.

But when they have been cured, there is no risk anymore, is there?

So, they're not wanted... They are kept there...

The sick is like an egg.

Either it fall to the stone... The stone...

And breaks...

Or the stone falls to the egg...

And in either case... It breaks... It breaks...

But then, what kind of leprosy are we talking about?

The doctor's leprosy, obviously, is the order:

The good ones on one side, the bad ones on the other.

But for us, a leper is something else.

As is we were talking about a different sickness... sickness...

There is another one who has lost all his fingers.

Then the stumps that he had left hardened

to the point that he drive nails into the wall

...with his hand... with what was left of his hand,

he hammered nails.

At first, one thought that leprosy was hereditary.

Now we know for sure that this is not the case.

It's been proven once and for all that it's contagious.

Moreover, it's a sickness caused by germs.

But... listen to this:

Evidently, since the nature of the leper germ still

hasn't been reproduced in laboratories,

it's impossible to prove that the contamination

is caused by the transmission of this germ.

Why? Isn't this a contradiction!

And... this:

New research gives a hope that it will be possible to clarify the role

that possible genetic conditions has in determining sensitivity towards leprosy.

News?

But then, what...

Contamination? Heredity?

Favorable genetic factors?

How strange it is!

It's like it won't fit into any sort of categorization...

too narrow...

Don't look him into the eyes...

Because the gaze can be contagious...

So...

We told them: Let us leave.

And we'll kiss the ground.

We don't want anything, not money... nothing.

In the beginning, to lock us up, the police was needed.

There had to be a prison.

Today, there are no more guards...

No more barriers...

A little bit of persuasion... maybe...

Because you are more human?

No.

Simply, the separation has been made.

The parents' reaction,

the tragedy of one of those contaminated,

was so overwhelming that it caused a quake,

felt by the whole family up to the 4th floor.

Now the cure has been around for years.

Most people, after getting cured

get a permit to leave,

but they can't go back to their old village.

There... they are still considered leprous.

To be alone...

Yes... alone...

Seated in a corner...

Not even to think...

To be merely alone.

Because, you see... the mirror of the others.

So... You go sit on a rock.

You watched, let's say... the horizon..

Just like that...

Because the others became insupportable.

To be alone...

We were condemned to this island.

Why couldn't we have been left in peace?

For you to be able to grasp exactly what happened,

I'll tell you this:

An immense wall of lies against us

was raised in Spinalonga,

in order to make other people think

that we were beings of a different kind.

The will to keep our voices

from being heard was so great that,

when in 1938,

the tycoon Papastratos offered us a telephone,

everything was done to avoid it from being installed.

In order to keep our voice from being heard,

covered, because it was filled with exasperation

against the injustice that we suffered.

But what was the relation to the doctor?

Well... What did you think?

Contamination? Heredity?

One thinks... One thought...

One thinks that leprosy is a hereditary disease

...and not contagious.

I remember this woman... Her hand was badly infected...

A doctor comes and tells me to go get the saw belonging to the artisan over there.

I say: - What for? - To cut off her arm.

I go and I bring it along... He tells me: - Hold her!

He then clear the meat from the bone and saws with the artisan's saw.

He patches her up with some stings! What else could he do?

After all, he wasn't a surgeon!

She lived another 15 years after this.

Because of the state you're in...

Because you always expected the worst...

You try not to be all alone when dying...

So you look for a woman...

A woman who can be of comfort in the difficult days towards the end...

You have no expectations. No beauty, no money.

Only... the woman is needed for your burial.

One says: She's a good choice, that one...

She will burry him.

You took us... You placed us there...

To protect yourselves.

By our isolation. An incredible isolation...

To protect yourselves.

An immense wall of lies against us

was raised on Spinalonga,

in order to make other people think

that we were beings of a different kind.

Here the circle is closing.

At Spinalonga they were fighting that.

Here, you see... they constructed that.

Everything will be organized...

The reclusion... and the alienation.

One often miss the life on Spinalonga.

Of course...

There we could seek the director, tell him all our discontent...

At first we said: Freedom, freedom and nothing else.

But later on, reality set in

to teach us a lesson.

One often miss the life on Spinalonga.

Because, contemplating life on the outside,

the life of our children, of our loved ones,

often it makes you sad... Because you envision life to be a certain way...

...and you have developed in a different way.

And often it makes us say: It would have been better at Spinalonga.

And many people got well just like that, without medication...

Yes... But they didn't return to their homes?

No...

Nobody would believe them in their home village.

It would have been better to stay on Spinalonga

than to live here.

Because you don't want to be classified in another world...

As a phenomenon...

Rather than seeing that...

It would have been better to stay on Spinalonga

than to live here.

and to see this, let's say this lamentable situation

of the ones that we love...

...to see this, let's say this lamentable situation of

the ones that we love...

From Athenes...

in the parliamentary journal, decree has been published

in which the island of Spinalonga

in the Elounda commune, in the Mirabello province,

is reconstructed...

and will from now on be called Kalidon.

The deprivations... the abandonments...

made you say: To hell with it! This is no life...

I would prefer to die...

It's the only way out.

There is no other exit.

What I wanted to say...

...is that it's not enough to want to do,

but that one has the possibility...

but that one has the possibility...

And like one said, a film is never anything else than a film...

It isn't life.

Certainly not.

Not the end... nor the whole ...

Not the end... nor the whole ...

You photographing monkey!

Soon, you will be packing

your equipment and leave this place...

while we will be staying.

Maybe there are sentiments inside you

of pity:

You feel sorry for us who are sick,

still, I think

that we are the ones who should feel sorry,

because if a wall separates us

in this jungle that is life,

we are the ones who have found a goal in life,

here, in this furnace

of sickness and isolation.

But then...

What does leprosy do?

What does the sickness do?

Cause symptoms?

No. That's not it.

It elsewhere than in the symptoms.

That illness, the one found in the symptoms,

is the social illness.

But... but the other one?

The other... Maybe it is forming us.

Maybe it isn't such an abnormal state to be in...

Only fever strokes can be seen.

So, it won't be a different state.

And what if one could live with the sickness just like one lives with one's health?

Because... What do we do with sickness?

We reject it, at any price.

Even if we have to reject the good things that it may bring along with it.

All one wants is for it to go away.

But nothing disappears.

So... where does it go?

Maybe it can be relocated elsewhere...

in the form of another sickness that will soon be fought too.

But... what is this stuff?

Will it never end!

And more and more illnesses will be invented...

...more and more complicated ones.

And what we call health will be increasingly narrowly defined,

more and more difficult to keep.

And what if health was the thing we feared? The thing we found deceptive?

If... if it didn't exist?

If it was no longer opposed to sickness?

Think about it...

Imagine you are the two things at the same time:

Sick... in good health...

Really. Good health...

These questions will have to be asked.

''What do you want?''

We - and I have said this myself

''we only want one thing...

''that we go from here, both living and dead.''

The moment you get sick, your childhood is gone.

You look at life in a more serious manner.

Differently than the kids around you.

I'll tell you one thing only:

We avoided mirrors.

Even in the barber shops there were none. We didn't want to see our bodies change.

But... there's no logic to it!

Why go to see the leprous?

Who do you want to talk about?

Stop,

while there is still time,

because tomorrow it may be too late...

Raise up, everyone,

and may everyone play his own separate role

in this though game...

Stop,

while there is still time, stop.

I don't know... You see?

The curse goes on.

You won't leave is in peace...

You won't do it.

You have rejected us...

Now please leave us alone... To live...

But no. You won't allow it.

You always find new ways...

You always find new ways to make it difficult for us.

You have never left us in peace...

Never.

Not there... nor here.

The curse goes on.

One day you will become

detergents yourselves,

and you'll end up living in the garbage.

I feel sorry for you. I'm saying this sincerely.

For your indifference,

one day, you will become detergents yourselves

and you will end up living in the garbage.

You're heading right towards disaster,

I feel sorry for you.

I'm telling you sincerely, because of your decadence,

your indifference,

your insolence.

On Spinalonga...

we may have created an ideal society... a humane one...

You know... nobody died alone here.

We stood guard night and day for the ones dying.

Among you, one can die alone...

in... in a hospital...

A horrible way to die.

I know the story of a man called Lambrakis.

Someone served him dog meat

to make him leprous.

At Skinia, they say that to cure someone from leprosy

you have to serve them dog meat.

It's true, isn't it?