{"id":1773,"date":"2026-09-08T22:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/main.cse-initiative.eu\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2026-09-08T22:01:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:01:22","slug":"preparing-for-january-26-2028-wannabe-despot-dashing-diplomat-or-boring-back-office-swot-greeces-founding-father-divides-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/main.cse-initiative.eu\/?p=1773","title":{"rendered":"Preparing for January 26 2028 – Wannabe despot, dashing diplomat or boring back-office swot? Greece\u2019s founding father divides opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2026\/jun\/16\/life-of-greece-first-governor-kapodistrias-biopic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He built modern Greece from the ground up, but Ioannis Capodistrias remains a controversial figure. A new biopic throws light on this overlooked titan of European history<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katy Dartford<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tue 16 Jun 2026 06.00 CEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O<\/strong>n a hilltop in central Corfu, a marble bust carved in the classical style gazes skyward, lean, fine-featured and composed to the point of austerity. There is no uniform, no decorations, nor symbols of office, just a name cut into the base in Greek capitals: \u0399 \u0391 \u039a\u0391\u03a0\u039f\u0394\u0399\u03a3\u03a4\u03a1\u0399\u0391\u03a3. The bust stands alone in the gardens of Koukouritsa, once the family home of Ioannis Capodistrias, the first governor of Greece. The villa is now the only museum in the country dedicated to the man who gave up one of the most powerful diplomatic positions in Europe<\/a> to return to a country that was barely a country and try to build one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without Capodistrias, there may have been no modern Greek state, and the map of Europe might look very different today. He spent years supplying material and moral support to the Greek revolutionaries; once independence was won from the Ottoman Empire, he negotiated directly with Britain, France and Russia over the new country\u2019s borders and future, then set about building the institutions, its currency, courts, schools and civil service that the modern state still stands on. \u201cHe who murdered Capodistrias murdered his homeland,\u201d Swiss philhellene Jean-Gabriel Eynard wrote on hearing of the statesman\u2019s assassination in 1831 at the hands of rebel leader allies turned enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Career politician \u2026 a portrait of Ioannis Capodistrias. Photograph: DEA\/ICAS94\/De Agostini\/Getty Images View image in fullscreen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet 250 years after his birth, Capodistrias remains one of the least well-known politicians of post-Napoleonic Europe outside Greece<\/a>, and often within it. Even the museum that preserves his memory is struggling \u201cto cover basic operational needs,\u201d as its director recently told Greek newspaper Kathimerini. A new film about his life, opening in UK cinemas this week after a successful run in Greece and screenings across Europe, is attempting to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Corfu in 1776, when the island still belonged to Venice, Capodistrias entered the Russian diplomatic service in his late 20s and, within six years, rose to become joint foreign minister of the Russian Empire under tsar Alexander I. At the Russian court, he moved in a glittering cultural circle. \u201cHe was a political operator of great skill,\u201d says Roderick Beaton, author of Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation. \u201cForeign politicians and diplomats at the time, particularly of the Vienna Congress, thought highly of him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, Capodistrias, written and directed by Yannis Smaragdis, makes sure to show that while its protagonist was shaped by Russia, he was not subservient to it. In one scene, Capodistrias urges the tsar towards war with the Ottomans, calculating that a Russian front would draw Ottoman forces away from Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his promotion to foreign minister, Capodistrias warns the tsar that if it ever came to a choice between Russia and Greece, he would choose Greece. Not long after the revolution, Capodistrias resigned from St Petersburg and spent years working the diplomatic circuits of Europe on behalf of his homeland. He later reflects on what kept him alive during his years in Russia: the knowledge that a grave was waiting for him in Corfu, \u201ca grave\u201d, he says, he \u201cnever once thought to trade for the largest palace in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet when the first emissary from the independence movement came to him, Capodistrias is said to have turned them away. Things changed when he was elected Greece\u2019s first head of state in 1827: he arrived the following year to a country with no currency, no functioning courts, no schools, and no army answerable to any single authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capodistrias is said to have worked from five in the morning until late at night, and the film portrays him as constantly working, attending mass and revered by those around him. He famously insisted: \u201cFirst we must make Hellenes, and then make Hellas,\u201d recognising that building a nation required first building its people. He founded schools, minted Greece\u2019s first currency, the Phoenix, organised the judiciary, and introduced the potato to stave off famine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Restrained character \u2026 Ilectra Fragkiadaki as Roxandra Sturdza and Antonis Myriagos in Capodistrias. Photograph: Alexandros Film – View image in fullscreen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are limits to how modern a figure Capodistrias can be made to seem, however. Smaragdis\u2019s film strains to build a colourful character out of his relationship with Greek aristocrat Roxandra Sturdza, which may have been less romantic in real life, and his association with bohemian types like the writer Alexander Pushkin, on whose behalf Capodistrias intervened when the tsar exiled him over a politically offensive poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fact that he was a friend of Pushkin means he must have been an interesting person rather than a boring back-office swot,\u201d says Jonathon Bond, a British researcher who has spent years studying Capodistrias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s little the film can do about Capodistrias\u2019s politics, which historians agree leaned towards the sort of autocracy that he had been used to in Russia. Some accused him of being a tyrant motivated by selfish ambition; others call him an enlightened despot, a description Beaton finds not far from the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Greeks wanted colourful heroes after the war of independence, and he doesn\u2019t provide that,\u201d Bond says. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re a monarchist, he\u2019s a failed republican.\u201d <\/strong>He didn\u2019t raise a sword in the war of independence, and worse still, he tried to cramp the style of the colourful warlords who had. \u201cHe was a sort of backroom diplomat of a type they didn\u2019t really recognise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This tension is shown vividly in the film; there is no warmth between the austere statesman in his black European coat and the colourful, gun-wielding men around him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing the warring local leaders directly, Capodistrias tells them Greece is at war with the Ottomans, and they must contribute. \u201cWe have to give?\u201d one questions. \u201cWeren\u2019t the Ottomans your enemies?\u201d Capodistrias asks. \u201cYou\u2019re an enemy too,\u201d comes the answer. \u201cBeware\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead actor Antonis Myriagos describes his approach to the role as \u201cthe chronicle of a death foretold\u201d. When he is warned of an attempt on his life, he goes anyway. As he walks to the church of St Spyridon in Nafplio, where the murder takes place, he is followed by what appears to be a chorus of mourning women, in the tradition of a Greek tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Capodistrias remains largely forgotten outside Greece can be explained \u201conly very partly\u201d by his assassination, says Beaton. More likely is that he was \u201chighly controversial and divisive in his lifetime, and, more remarkably, still is.\u201d Beaton adds: \u201cIn more recent times he has been adopted as a hero by the political right, and condemned as a dictator by the left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Greece, where the film opened on Christmas Day, critics and the public were sharply divided. Professional reviewers were largely withering; audiences embraced it, while it has now been confirmed as the fifth highest-grossing Greek film of all time. The gap between the two verdicts is itself a Capodistrias story; a figure who still, nearly two centuries on, provokes argument about what Greece is and what it should have been. \u201cHis is a fascinating story,\u201d says Beaton, \u201cand deserves to be much better known.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The great counterfactual of Australian history<\/p>\n\n\n\n