Alki Zei was born in Athens in 1925. Her father was from Crete and her mother from Samos, where Alki lived her first childhood years. She studied in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Athens, however soon realized her artistic calling and transferred to the Athens Conservatory School of Drama and then to the Department of Scriptwriting of the Moscow Film Institute.

Although she was born in Greece, she lived outside its borders for many years due to her political beliefs. In this way, her travels as a political refugee took her to the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1964, when she returned to Greece; in 1967, however she and her family were forced to flee again with the arrival of the Colonels' Dictatorship. This time her country of exile was France and she called Paris her temporary home.

As a child, Alki Zei loved to...