Leaders of the World

A portrait of the leader, and of the country

In the mid-1980s George Petritsis proposed to ERT1 a series of documentaries with a simple title: Leaders. Each hour-long colour film would introduce Greek viewers to the personality and political beliefs of a contemporary leader. At the same time it would take them on a journey through the leader’s country, its history, its culture and its present-day reality, so that the portrait of the leader also became a portrait of a country and its people.

The first films were already being delivered to ERT1 in late 1985. Marshal Tito and Archbishop Makarios were portrayed through the people who had known them; for Makarios the crew filmed in Cyprus, with exclusive interviews by President Spyros Kyprianou and Vassos Lyssarides. For Felipe González, then the youngest prime minister in Europe, they spoke with Javier Solana, the minister of culture, and with editors of the newspaper El País. On 25 October 1985 the crew travelled to Rome to film two more portraits: an exclusive interview with Pope John Paul II, and Sandro Pertini, the former president of Italy.

On ERT1, 1986

In February 1986 the newspaper Ta Nea announced that the series would start in March on ERT1, every Saturday at 6:45 pm, with eight portraits: Felipe González, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland, the first woman in the world elected president, Pope John Paul II, Rudolf Kirchschläger of Austria, Olof Palme, Sandro Pertini, Makarios and Tito.

On these journeys I met presidents, prime ministers and ministers who spoke on the programme, but above all I came to know the life and the mentality of different European countries. I found that on many issues we Greeks are very close to them, and on others very far.

— George Petritsis, Ta Nea, February 1986

Olof Palme’s last interview

The eighth film was to be shot in Sweden. George Petritsis followed Olof Palme on what became his last tour of northern and central Sweden, where the prime minister visited factories and talked with workers in remote parts of the country. Palme gave him his last interview on a Wednesday, two days before he was shot dead in Stockholm on 28 February 1986.

The Greek press called him “the last journalist who saw and spoke with Olof Palme”. ERT1 broadcast the 45-minute film on Saturday 15 March 1986, the day of Palme’s funeral.

On Monday morning, five days before he was murdered, Palme, wrapped in a fur and sitting on a sledge, crossed the snow-white landscape. He looked happy and content. Who could have imagined that it was the last journey of his life…

— George Petritsis

The leaders return, 1997

About ten years after the first series, the Leaders returned. The new series opened on ET2 on 17 and 18 June 1997 with two prime ministers who were new faces in European politics: Göran Persson of Sweden and Romano Prodi of Italy. Their meeting in Rome went on for more than an hour, with Prodi asking for details on Greek issues. The new series gave particular weight to the leaders of the European Union, and contacts had already been made with the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

As before, each film combined the interview with a guided tour of the country, its historical, national and cultural identity and its present-day political and social situation, always centred on the personality of the leader.

Before the series

George Petritsis had been interviewing statesmen long before Leaders. In 1981 he interviewed James Callaghan, Britain’s former prime minister and its foreign secretary at the time of the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, about the events of that summer.