Greece’s Oscar submission for 2020 is a terrific tale of a dying Greek village

Marianna Economou's fabulous documentary telling the story of a remote Greek village being rescued by organic tomatoes has been submitted by Greece for best international feature category in the 92nd Academy Awards.

When Tomatoes Met Wagner is a wonderful story about the remote village of Elias, where Greece’s economic crisis hit hard and the loss of its young people seems to spell the end of an ancient way of life, When Tomatoes Met Wagner has been hailed as a marvellous display for contemporary global despair.

When farmer Christos decides to bring some zest back to a village with only 33 inhabitants, no shops, no school or even a priest, his idea turns the place around. Turning his land over to the cultivation of organic tomatoes, and blasting them with Wagner through loudspeakers, may sound like an odd way out for a village of mostly elderly farmers. But soon the organic tomatoes, grown and processed locally, are finding their way into health food shops worldwide and reviving the village both financially and spiritually.

The touching documentary highlights how a Greek community survived austerity by looking in their own backyard and realising how much wealth was there to be made.

An enlightening and heartfelt story, When Tomatoes Met Wagner, premiered at this year's Berlinale in the Culinary Cinema program. Produced by Anemon Productions and Stefi and Lynx Productions, world sales for the 72-minute film are being sold internationally by Berlin's Rise and Shine World Sales.

Greece has submitted films to the Academy Awards since the 1950s and been nominated five times, most recently for Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, but has never won an Oscar.

The 92nd Academy Awards take place on February 9, 2020.

*Watch the trailer here-