Concrete is a tender and quietly surreal exploration of cultural identity, inherited migration, and the ache of feeling caught between worlds. The film follows 19-year-old Aggelos (Ari Kwasner-Catsi), a third-generation Greek Australian navigating life in Sydney, torn between the Hellenic traditions of his ancestors and the pulsating lure of underground rave culture.

In the Australian cultural landscape, where the derogatory ethnic slur “wog” is still used to describe Greek people, a lingering hostility has shaped how Aggelos’s parents have raised him. Rather than embracing their heritage and passing down traditions, they have been conditioned to keep it at arm’s length. His dad (Alex Blias) recalls how much he hated being dragged to church by his yiayia and didn’t want to force that experience on his children. The result? A diluted cultural connection. Aggelos doesn’t speak Greek, and his girlfriend and friends aren’t Greek either. He’s left with an identity crisis, haunted by the feeling that a part of him is missing.

The film weaves surrealism seamlessly into Aggelos’s internal journey. After a night of raving, he finds himself alone beneath the flickering fluorescent lights of an underpass when a mysterious papou – the Greek word for grandad – (George Papaioannou) appears, calmly watering the cracked concrete. “The cracks are getting bigger,” he tells Aggelos. “Every night I water them.” When he passes the hose to Aggelos, the water suddenly stops – a quiet, yet potent metaphor: how do you nourish a culture that’s crumbling, when you're three generations removed from the source?

The Papou speaks in Greek to Aggelos and becomes frustrated when he can’t understand. “But you say you’re Greek?” It’s a loaded question that emphasises Aggelos’s detachment. Before vanishing into the night, the Papou leaves Aggelos with a final reminder: it’s Easter Saturday. 

Greek Easter is the most significant holiday in Greek tradition, bigger even than Christmas. While his family avoids it, reluctant to mingle with a community they’ve long distanced themselves from, Aggelos feels called to celebrate it. 

From listening to traditional Greek music in his bedroom, going to raves, lurking in desolate corners of the city, and nervously entering the crowded church alone, Aggelos moves through fragmented spaces that reflect his yearning for belonging and community.

Ultimately, Concrete is a thought-provoking reflection on cultural identity and rediscovery. It doesn’t offer easy answers; instead, it captures the complex emotional experience of growing up distanced from your heritage and from the very roots that shaped your family for generations. It explores the quiet shame of feeling like an outsider in your own culture, and the personal pilgrimage one undertakes in the hope of feeling whole again.