A tribute to the Greek "blues" tradition, loosely based on the life story of its legendary star, Marika Ninou, a refugee from the 1922 "Great Disaster," who struggled out of the Piraeus slums to win fame-though little happiness-as far abroad as America, before her death in 1956. In this ostensibly simple tale of a passionate woman's sacrifices for her music, director Costas Ferris has fashioned a spectacular allegory of birth, decline, death and rebirth of a singer, the "blues, " and an entire nation.