"The film revolves around the subjects of emigration and the longing one perceives for one′s native country; it is also about the responsibility of the mass media. It was my aim to shed some light on an extremely violent and tragic moment in Greece′s and Albania′s recent history." -Constantine Giannaris Loosely based on an actual hostage crisis from 1999, Hostage is about Elion, a young Albanian man who hijacks a bus on the road that runs between Athens and Thessaloniki and takes the seven passengers hostage. Among his demands is safe passage to the Albanian border so that he can return home. A media circus erupts around the sensational story and it follows the bus all the way to its inevitable, tragic conclusion. The film addresses issues of irrational Greek xenophobia and hostility towards Albanians in the wake of the fall of Communism and after the mid-90s conflict in Eastern Europe. And those issues mesh nicely with one of Giannaris favourite subjects-the marginalized of modern society (From the Edge of the City, Three Steps to Heaven).