"Black Stone," a mockumentary by Greek director Spiros Jacovides, is a heartwarming comedy and family drama. However, more importantly, it's a critique of ableism and racism, highlighting the natural right to be different. If someone is disabled, why shouldn't they be cantankerous among the healthy? If someone has black skin, why shouldn't they be at ease among whites?

The film opens in the bright interiors of government offices, befitting the cleanliness of Greek administration, with overflowing files, noise, and a few nervous officials. The backdrop is the disappearance of public servants due to the embezzlement of state funds. After this introduction, we are brought, in a pseudo-documentary style, into the home of the Dologlou family, into the embrace of the caring 68-year-old widow Haroula, whose mainstay, her son Panos, has also disappeared. She will confidently guide us through the events, much as she controls her own life and the lives of her two sons. Her disabled and grumpy son Lefteris is brought into the story, whom she cares for unquestionably, and then the good-natured taxi driver Michalis, an African Greek. Michalis selflessly helps Haroula, while he lifts Lefteris from despondency as they share a love for the same football club and light drugs. Breaking down Haroula's xenophobic prejudices, he becomes a member of the household. What started as an unburdened comedy of searching for the missing Panos begins to complicate and turns into a family drama mediated by racism from the societal milieu. Despite all this, protagonist Haroula doesn't completely lose her selfless motherhood.

The cast performs well in embodying the simple tasks of stereotypically positioned characters, except for the somewhat complex characters of the mother and, to some extent, Panos. Haroula (Eleni Kokkidou) is mostly shot in close-up, from a slightly elevated angle: warm and emotional, in love and anger, in the "psychopathological hardness" that will conclude the film. One may wonder why such a caring, warm, and protective mother didn't make more effort to understand her problematic children. The likely answer is that she didn't have the strength for it, even though she gave as much as she could.

Given the straightforward plot and character portrayal, and the apparent unpretentiousness of the idea, the film may seem like a gentle parody with social critique. However, "Black Stone" is, in fact, a very good psychological drama about family relations between a mother and her sons, expanded with the problem of xenophobia and racism, where the episodes in the form of character comedy are well-integrated. Perhaps after a film where we occasionally had a good laugh, those less tolerant among us might leave with some thoughts about whether they exaggerate their disdain for the disabled neighbor, irritation felt towards the voices of children at the end of the street, or hatred towards the "eccentric" and all those who are different.

Although "Black Stone" ends in tragedy, the mother's death opens space for a new and better life for all those who loved her. In the final frame of the film, Panos, with a gentle smile, reveals what the black stone is. In its hollow, there is (symbolically, like in the womb of his again pregnant wife) a small panda: a black-and-white symbol of racial mixing in the new worldview spirit. The transformation of the black stone—from a weight in the documentation of the archaic social system to an object carrying the liberation of a child's dream of universal, cosmic unity and the emancipation of the cosmopolitan soul of humanity—is the essence of this film.