Greek American producer and director James Axiotis spoke about his adoption from Greece in the 1960s and his upcoming short film “Georgia,” dedicated to his biological mother, Georgia Koraki. He was speaking with Dimitris Kontogiannis on “Our Global Voice” on Voice of Greece.
Axiotis said he was 12 when his Greek American adoptive parents told him he had been adopted, and 18 when he learned the full story of his biological mother. For the past five to six years, he has been working to tell the story of Georgia Koraki, who was unmarried when she gave birth to him and was forced to consent to his adoption. Yet she found the strength to go to court to see him, even for just a few minutes, before they were separated, around 16 months after his birth—something most other unmarried mothers did not do at the time. It was the last time she saw him. Georgia Koraki died young, on 30 September 1981, at the age of 37.
“Georgia,” which will be filmed in Athens, tells his biological mother’s story while also exposing what he described as a “rigged” adoption system that forcibly separated mothers from their children. The screenplay was selected at the International Film Festival of Greece, and the story has already resonated widely, with Axiotis’s posts on the subject attracting millions of views.
Axiotis, who spent the first 499 days of his life without a name in an orphanage before being adopted in California, acknowledged that his biological mother’s story has profoundly shaped his life. He credits her as the inspiration behind everything he does, including his work helping refugee children in Ukraine and along the Jordan–Syria border.
He said the Greek state should issue a public apology to all children adopted during that period, as Britain had done in the past, arguing that it had sought to get rid of them. Such an acknowledgment, he stressed, would help ease their pain.