‘Arm Wrestler’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir/scr: Yorgos Goussis. Greece 2022. 77 mins.

A sport with minimal cinematic heritage gets a muscular new addition in Yorgos Goussis’ Greek documentary Arm Wrestler (Heiropalaistis), though the actual business of mano-a-mano grappling is far from centre stage. Instead, this Thessaloniki Documentary Festival premiere is an absorbingly unfussy, fly-on-the-wall character-study of the director’s brother Panos — a 30-year-old cafe-owner, aspiring actor and occasional clown/magician for whom arm-wrestling is essentially a time-consuming side line. A co-production of Greece’s national broadcaster, it is amply deserving of further big-screen play at the festival circuit’s more discerning non-fiction-oriented events.



Arm Wrestler is a thoroughly classy, poised and well-modulated affair from top to bottom

In 2020, director/co-writer Goussis landed Greece’s equivalent of the Oscar when his 22-minute The Arm Wrestler was named best short documentary at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards. This new work is, despite the abbreviated title, an expansion of that earlier project incorporating much of its footage and including mention of its victory — which was also Morgane Dziurla-Petit’s approach with her Rotterdam prize winner from earlier this year, Excess Will Save Us. 



At one point, protagonist Panos is even seen watching and commenting upon the short in bed with his girlfriend Stefania — true to long-standing observational-documentary modes, the self-evident presence of camera and crew is never directly acknowledged, even in the confines of the bedroom. 



There are, however, several interludes when the brothers (Yorgos is heard but unseen) chat freely while Panos drives; the latter opens up about his current situation and his hopes for the future. Initially coming across as a somewhat humourless sort, the enterprising, ambitious and persistent Panos quickly reveals a certain deadpan wit. This helps him cope with the daily frustrations inflicted upon him by his fellow humans.



Even when he succeeds in the arm-wrestling arena (after several on-camera reverses), Panos — who endearingly bills himself as “The Nobody” — is unable to simply relax and celebrate, instead finding ample fuel for his ever-smouldering ire in the incompetence of the sport’s officials.

As well as functioning as an intimate portrait of an unusual individual, Arm Wrestler manages to pack a surprising amount into its 77-minute running-time. Panos’ social context is unobtrusively sketched, as he segues between the Athens suburbs where his cafe-grill restaurant is located and his home village in the countryside. Scenes of arduous roadwork amid a range of natural and industrial backdrops — ochre hillocks, fume-belching chemical works — are crisply executed in atmospheric medium and long-shot by cinematographer Yorgos Koutsaliaris, boosted by Dimitris Manousiakis’ digital colour-correction.



In a refreshing departure from current documentary fashions, meanwhile, the score by Pan Pan and Haris Neilas is very sparingly deployed. Goussis (whose sole previous feature-length outing was 2021 fiction Magnetic Fields) more prominently features the diegetic tones of the pounding electronica which is played at arm-wrestling tournaments to the accompaniment of frenetically flashing lights. A world away from such showbiz excesses, Arm Wrestler is a thoroughly classy, poised and well-modulated affair from top to bottom, distinguished by a strong compositional sense and even touches of impressionistic poetry via seasoned editor Dimitris Polyzos’ slow transitional dissolves.