Lion of Crete’s story to be told on film

Australian and NZ producers unite to create a $6m feature film portraying the exploits of ANZAC WWII soldier Dudley Perkins


The first stage in the production of a major feature film depicting ANZAC involvement with the Cretan resistance during WWII was presented to an influential audience of MPs, community and business leaders in Melbourne last week.
With an estimated production budget of $6m,The Straggler will tell the story of New Zealand soldier Dudley Perkins, who after his capture in Crete in June 1941, escaped, and spent a year on the run before being evacuated.
Inspired by the Cretan people’s resistance to the German occupation, he left his NZ unit to join the British Special Operations Executive in order to return to Crete as a special agent.
In 1943 Perkins took command of hundreds of partisans in western Crete, which he trained and led in attacks against the Nazi occupiers, until his death at the hands of a German patrol in February 1944.
Known to Cretans as ‘Vasili – the lion of Crete’, Perkin’s courageous actions have become legend.
Jonathan Ogilvie – a Sydneysider originally from Christchurch and The Straggler’s director – told Neos Kosmos that he began writing the script seven years ago.
“I went to Crete first in 2001 with Murray Elliot, who wrote the definitive book on Perkins in the 1980s. He showed me Koustoyerako, Achlada and other places where these events took place.
“Fast-forward 11 years and we now have a screenplay.”
Ogilvie says that he’s keen to shed new light on a theatre of war too often forgotten.
“It’s so significant for Australians and New Zealanders, and that it created these bonds between Cretan people and the ANZACS.
With development funding already provided by Screen Australia and New Zealand Film Commission it’s still early days for the production. With a $6m budget, the finance plan proposes funding coming from Australia and New Zealand in a fifty-fifty split.
The film will have few if any sequences shot in Crete, rather New Zealand’s South Island will act as its double.
“We’re going to shoot in Alexandria, Otago. It’s almost identical with Crete,” says Ogilvie.
“Perkins used to write letters home saying how much parts of Crete reminded him of New Zealand.”
Ogilvie and his producers say their approach to the Victorian Greek diaspora comes from a wish to invite those with the strongest connection, to be part of the production.
“We’re looking for people to come with us on this journey,” said one of the production’s three producers, Michael Wrenn.
“It might be through memories of the war, or artefacts we can use, or it might be through direct investment.”
At the dinner to launch the project sponsored by the Philhellene restaurant in Melbourne, one VIP guest – 81 year-old George Paterakis – had a particular interest in the film.
As a boy in the village of Koustoyerako in 1943, George knew Perkins, and with his family, helped the Kiwi pallikari on operations against the Germans.
“He once gave me two gold sovereigns and said I should buy my mother some flowers.
“He was the best of the men who passed through the mountains, the chief of 200 partisans,” said George, “and he looked after them like they were his children. It is a very important story.”