Synopsis
In the middle of Cyprus’ savage financial crisis, P is an unemployed husband and father of two. Suffering from the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after a lethal explosion at the Naval base he was stationed at killed a half-dozen young soldiers, including most of his own squad, he has daily panic attacks, and can’t hold down a job...
And the thing he’s scared about the most right now are the foreclosure warnings he keeps receiving in the mail. He hides them, and himself, in the garage, where, just like every other Cypriot male of fighting age, P keeps his fully automatic machine gun and 400 bullets.
Lately, he’s often thought of turning them on himself... But he knows that his family won’t collect on his military life insurance if he kills himself. Suicide is not an acceptable form of death for the army.
Mrs P on the other hand is sewing other people’s clothes to make the loose change they need to pay for stuff like electricity and water. She hasn’t slept with her husband in months and can’t wait for P to take the kids to school so she can have a secret cigarette in the back yard.
The only thing holding the family together is the house they live in. The old, colonial house they renovated when they first got married, with its garden cut in half by the buffer zone that divides the city of Nicosia in two.
But when the bailiffs come to take it away, and Mrs P shoots, and kills, one of them accidentally with the bullet P had kept in the chamber, the walls both around and between the family are about to come crashing down.
With nothing left to lose, the P’s will be forced to make one final stand, to save their family and their home.
On hand to complicate matters are Miss Eglie, a tough-as-nails broker and customer of Mrs P’s, whose attempts to close the deal of the century are interrupted by being taken hostage by the family, and a hapless Greek Taxidriver who chose a really bad day to quit smoking.
But as the machinery of state (first the Police and then the Anti-terrorist squad) closes in, and his children return from school to find themselves caught in the standoff, P has no way out.
With the police and the Cypriot army in front of him, and the United Nations and the Turkish army behind him, he will have to find a way to keep the house, and to get his family out of danger.
Agreeing to exchange Miss Eglie for his son, and connecting with the Taxi driver, who has managed to smuggle his daughter out of the blockaded street, P hatches a plan...