Ballad for a Pierced Heart (I balada tis trypias kardias)

Beautiful Olga knows, she could do better than playing trophy wife to a rich brute in a grim provincial town somewhere in Greece. She finds solace in the arms of her new lover, pop-folk-singer-cum-nightclub-owner, Manos. She leaves her husband Iraklis for good, taking away not only his honor, but also his secret stash of one million euros. The couple go off the grid, to a love nest in the mountains.This double insult is too much for Iraklis to take. Instigated by his mother Fotini, he contacts the head of the local mafia, Tsekos, and puts a contract on both their heads.
In the clean mountain air, Olga gets her mojo back and decides she will return the money. Manos doesn’t show his frustration but reaches out to his mother, Aliki, and expresses his murderous thoughts to her. She convinces her weak-minded narcissist of a son that the right thing to do is betraying Olga and keeping the money for themselves. Of course, no one must know of the one million euros, so Iraklis must “disappear”, too. To that end, they contact Tsekos as well, and put a contract on both Iraklis’ and Olga’s heads.

But Tsekos, who’s spent decades in the “making people disappear” business, knows better than letting a chance like this slip through his fingers. He has a better plan and no qualms about it: killing the lot of them and keeping the million for the family. That means there is no room for outside witnesses… but what about the inside ones?

Lost in their conniving planning and scheming, the three families forget the strongest motive of all: love. Pure, romantic, unrequitted love, the kind that can drive a man to do anything in order to save an unsuspecting woman from the wolves that surround her.

The beautiful Olga elopes with a former pop star and triggers a fatal domino effect in the local crime world. Yannis Economides’ Ballad for a Pierced Heart, is a black gangster comedy reminiscent of the Coen brothers, thanks to the explicit dialogues, laconic images and sudden outbursts of violence.