When "SIRENS" was screened I was surprised that, aside from a Turkish distributor who wanted to cut scenes with politics and sex, which I didn't allow, very few people were troubled by the contradictory characters of my soldiers. Not even natives of the wild Cretan village of Zoniana, who rushed to the Astoria Cinema in Heraklion to see their fellow villager, setting a house record. The climate was probably not suitable for diagnoses of self-knowledge issues after winning the EURO CUP, the electoral victories of the NEW DEMOCRACY party, the impeccable organization of the Olympics, the successful rejection of the Annan Plan, and the - unfortunately unilateral - recognition of the Republic of Cyprus by Europe, etc. We were still confident that the Hellenes are the bravest and most intelligent people in the world. In 2006 when I started writing "COOL" the image of blissful prosperity had begun to crumble and the problem of our "strong economy" and the coming bankruptcy appeared, but also the extent of interwoven special interests, corruption and lawlessness: extra-judicial collusions, nepotism and manipulations of bonds, party favoritism in appointments, telephone wiretaps, kidnapping of migrants, beatings of demonstrators by the police, and more. This image annoyed many viewers and one critic was indignant that she couldn’t find a single positive hero in the movie.