This is the first episode of the TV series Drifting cities, adapted by Manthoulis from Stratis Tsirkas’s trilogy by the same name. The Club is set in Jerusalem during the Second World War and narrates the interacting stories of its heroes who belong to different nationalities, religions and ideologies. They all stay in a Babel-like pension. Acquaintances, fake friendships, dislikes, fights, secrets, passions and loneliness characterize their daily life. Manthoulis had a brilliant cast, George Horafas, Marina Vlady, Juliana Samarin and Christos Tsagas. Denny Vahlioti designed the costumes and Nikos Smaragdis was the cinematographer. The cosmopolitan atmosphere, the shooting on location in Jerusalem, the music of George Moustaki and the Durrellian intrigue made it one of most successful serials in French TV.

Robert Manthoulis (1929-2022), active as a teenager in the anti-Nazi resistance, studied political science in Athens and then cinema in New York. He directed fiction films - for example, Hands Up Hitler (1963) and Face to Face (1966) - but his obsession was documentary. Exiled to Paris during the dictatorship, he worked for French television. In 1975, he became for one year the artistic director of  the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). He later traveled, making documentaries for French television. In the early 1980s, he was again called upon to contribute to the improvement of Greek television, but eventually devoted himself to the creation of the television series Ungoverned cities (1983-1986) and the documentary Greek Civil War (1997) and  its six-hour television version. In the 1990s, he performed an important role as a mediator of cultural relations between Greece and France, while also working to highlight the educational role of television.