Before there was winter, there was a mother’s grief.

HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER is a cinematic retelling of one of ancient Greece’s most powerful myths — the story of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and her daughter Persephone, whose abduction by Hades to the Underworld gave birth to the changing seasons.

When Persephone is taken, Demeter’s sorrow drains the life from the earth, plunging the world into famine until even the gods of Olympus must intervene. What follows is a tale of loss, defiance, betrayal, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and her daughter — and the eternal cycle of light and darkness, life and death, spring and winter that it left behind.

The Hymn to Demeter is one of the thirty-three ancient Greek poems known as the Homeric Hymns. In antiquity, the hymns were generally attributed to the poet Homer, though modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. The rediscovery of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in 1777 led to a resurgence of European interest in the hymns, inspiring poets, painters, and composers ever since.