The Red River (Greek: Το Κόκκινο Ποτάμι, Romanized: To Kokkino Potami) is a Greek-language historical television series, directed by Manousos Manousakis for Open TV in 2019, to 2023 based on the homonymous historical novel by Charis Tsirkinidis, and concerns real events surrounding the Greek Genocide.
This is the most expensive production in the history of Greek television with a total cost of over 4 million euros.
On October 6, 2019, Open TV started broadcasting To Kokkino Potami every Sunday at 9:00pm. It continued on May 24, 2020, after the break because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece, at 10:00pm. The last episode was broadcast on July 13, 2020.
Starred by Ioannis Papazisis, Anastasia Pantousi, Tania Tripi, Konstantinos Kazakos, Takis Vamvakidis, Tatiana Papamoschou, Argiris Pantazaras and Chara Mata Giannatou.
Plot
The series is about a love story at the beginning of the 20th century, during the years of persecution of the Greeks of Pontus by the Ottoman Empire. The story begins in the town of Akdağmadeni in the Prefecture of Ankara, in May 1895, when the family of Georgios Pavlidis is engaged to their 9-year-old son, Miltos, to the 7-year-old Iphigenia, daughter of Michalis Nikolaidis.
An engagement of expediency, as was customary at that time, as, according to Muslim law, if a girl was engaged, she was considered dishonored and was not allowed to become a Muslim woman. The attacks of the fanatical Turks forced the two families to leave their place, with the Pavlidis family settling in Samsun and the Nikolaidis family in Constantinople. The two young people met by chance again in Constantinople, after 11 years and, without knowing the family relationship that binds them, they fell in love.