What are the experiences that shape the long lives of those we live among?

The Unimagined Lives of Our Neighbors: Occupation Diary is the second part of a series of film portraits of nonagenarians recounting their own experiences in history changing events that shaped the world and the rest of their own lives. Neither agents nor victims, these portraits are an attempt to give voice and memory to those elderly people who live quietly among us yet often unseen, are still part of our communities and whose experiences in history altering events help enlarge and give personal dimension to our understanding of such past events.

In Occupation Diary, Alex Matthews at 93, recounts his role in the largely unknown Guerilla resistance in the struggle against the horrors of Nazi Occupation of Greece that led up to the first Greek Civil war--the first cold war conflict of the post-war period and the first use of the American "containment policies." Using excerpts and images from his war dairies, family photographs, and other archival materials intercut with the sites of struggle in the present, Matthews recounts to his daughter what he witnessed 75 years earlier. In this intimate portrait, he is sstill trying to comprehend the devastation, violence he encountered, as a young man, as well as defending the ethics of some of his actions that lead up to leaving his beloved Greece forever.

Camera, Edit, Direction: Jeffrey Skoller
Editor: Zachary Epcar
Sound Mix: Ernst Karel

World premiere: IMPACT HUB ATHENS, Athens, Greece, 2025