Movies that combine the closed social structures of provincial life with the return of a troubled hero to his place of origin - either because of city fatigue or because he was forced to leave and now returns seeking revenge - are ideal for self-analysis by the filmmaker. My friend Edgar Reitz nearly moved to his village of Hunsrück in 1982 to make the epic trilogy "Heimat" ("Homeland"), and is currently shooting the fourth cycle of the TV series. My own personal experience was poor and my knowledge of provincial life came only from the stories of friends and relatives, so "Female Company" can’t be described in all ways as autobiographical. Given that half the population of the capital had abandoned the provinces quite recently, the theme seemed more interesting than the articles about subsidy scandals in farmers' co-operatives, networks of usury and the sexual exploitation of female migrants. The known case of organized adultery in Larisa, which reinforced all the myths and stereotypes, was just one more argument for funding the production. When I went to Patras to scout for locations my "local guide" swore that he had much better stories than the Larissa affair and when he began telling them I promised him we'd shoot 48 serial episodes. The interesting thing was that the affairs he described were amazingly similar to the ones we saw in tabloid headlines and TV news shows, and of course in the characters and the plot of the script. If I hadn’t worked on the script with a lady columnist, expert on womanhood, I would have claimed I was shooting a docudrama.