A few days ago, it was announced that Netflix had acquired the worldwide rights to Christophoros Papakaliatis’ Maestro series, the first Greek product to be released on the popular platform. The news is certainly welcome, but also revealing the work being done behind the scenes by Greek producers to further open the channels of communication between Greek cinema and television and the world market. We also learned yesterday that The Apples, the Christos Nikos film that represented Greece at the 2021 Oscars, was bought (right by the way) by big-name producers Jason Schwartzman and Ian Reed to be made into a mini-series.

There is also a powerful manager behind the project, whose clients include, for example, the great Bong Joon Ho, and producer Jerome Dubose, as well as Cate Blanchett’s company Dirty Films. In the end, the latter ardently supported the film “Apples” at their festival screening, culminating in the selection of the film from the very eclectic Telluride and the “opening” in Mostras’ Horizons section.

“The screening of the film abroad was great. It made a huge impression on the bigwigs in cinema, was included in the lists of the best films of the year and was sold in about 70 countries around the world. The big trouble was that it was released in the first year of the pandemic and therefore did not receive the proper audience and popularity, and in Greece it was also frankly and unfairly underestimated, ”producer (Boo Production) Iraklis Mavroidis tells us. .

He informs us that Christos Niku is currently in Toronto filming his second movie called Nails. The script, which he re-signed with his constant companion Stavros Raptis, wants protagonist Anna to question her relationship with her longtime partner and resort to a mysterious establishment that “experiences” a percentage of … love between couples. The all-star cast includes Jesse Buckley (Lost Daughter), Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), one of the hottest personalities in modern independent filmmaking, and Jeremy Allen White, who has been involved in TV launch promotions. Bear’.

The extraversion of the filmmakers is a testament to the work done behind the scenes by the Greek producers.

“Apples” in a row

Let’s go back to the TV “Apples” and the first information that mentions that Christos Niku himself will take over the leadership, although this has not yet been given. What is certain is that there will be some adaptation of the script, so that the special world of the film, which takes place, let’s remember, in the era of the amnesia epidemic, can be transferred to the small screen. “It’s a bit difficult to present it as a series, they will probably keep the central idea as it is, and from now on it will change a lot,” Mr. Mavroides notes, adding, however, that this is a common practice.

He was also the producer of the film “Kinodontas”, where the then young Christos Nicu worked for free as the second assistant director. “What Giorgos Lanthimos did certainly opened the way; since then, various people have followed him, going their own way. Indeed, the mini-cosmogony of The Fang did not create a new (strange) wave in Greek cinema, as many initially claimed, but a belief in the possibilities and especially in the extraversion of young filmmakers, directors, etc. There are enough examples.

Athena Rachel Tsangari produced Tsortzis Grigorakis’ excellent film The Digger, which also drew attention at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic. These days, the Greek director is preparing to leave for the Tallinn Film Festival to promote his own idea for an English-produced mini-series. When I point out to him that filmmakers of his generation seem more open to the world of modern TV, he agrees without hesitation: “Modern miniseries especially, are basically a different version of cinema. I believe that international co-production in the future will also be heavily related to series, which is great as long as the artistic output remains high.”

Vassilis Kekatos, winner of the Palme d’Or for the short film The Distance Between Heaven and Us, is also in the final stages of producing his own Milky Way series. At the same time, in addition to “Maestro”, international distribution through HBO Max will also receive “Magnetic Fields”, a surprise film by Yorgos Gusis, which the platform will show mainly in Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and all the Balkans.