Christos Nikou Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Jeremy Allen White continues to add new projects to his schedule before he shoots the next season of “The Bear.” Last week, the actor joined the cast of A24‘s upcoming wrestling family biopic “The Iron Claw.” This week, White joins an upcoming Apple Original Films movie from up-and-coming director, Christos Nikou.   READ MORE: ‘The Bear’: Jeremy Allen White On His Hit FX Series, His ‘Shameless’ Days, & An Aversion To Superhero Roles [Bingeworthy Podcast] Deadline reports that White joins Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed in “Fingernails,” Nikou’s follow-up to this 2020 film “Apples.” And like “Apples,” “Fingernails” continues the Greek director’s slanted approach to sci-fi.

Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) has been tapped for a role in the newest film from Wes Anderson, Deadline can confirm.

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Fingernails, the Apple Original Films sci-fi love story of sorts that marks the English-language debut of Greek writer-director Christos Nikou. It came off the success of his debut pic Apples, which was Greece’s submission to last year’s Oscar race.

Greece’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival returns this evening for its 64th edition with a screening of The Pot-au-Feu (The Taste of Things), the latest film by French-Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng. 

One of the most intriguing films of the fall is a new genre-bending film from Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou. Nikou started as an assistant director and second unit director on films like Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth.” He then made shorts and then graduated to feature-length filmmaking with his acclaimed 2020 film, “Apples,” which Cate Blanchett loved so much she came on as an executive producer.

UPDATED with lineup additions, 11:01 AM: The American Film Institute today added some films to its 2023 lineup. The five films selected by Guest Artistic Director Greta Gerwig are All That Jazz, An American in Paris, Wings of Desire A Matter of Life and Death and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. She will introduce the latter two.

Deadline kicked off movie-awards season Saturday with Contenders London, which featured creatives and key craftspeople from 13 buzzy films that will be at the forefront of kudos conversations leading up to the Oscars in March.

Greek writer-director Christos Nikou wanted to explore the modern concept of love when he approached his English-language debut Fingernails starring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and Luke Wilson. Speaking at Deadline’s Contenders London event on Saturday, the Apples director admitted that the concept of dating apps and using algorithms to find love was an idea that intrigued him. 

After sitting it out last year, Deadline’s Contenders film series returns to London this weekend with a strong lineup featuring Ridley Scott, Emerald Fennell, Todd Haynes and Michael Mann among the panelists on tap to attend the awards-season event.

Women Rule Still Coming into the festival, many of the biggest main competition buzz pictures were directed by women. Many now figure, according to a El Diario Vasco Spanish critics’ poll, as Golden Shell frontrunners: Isabel Helguera’s animated pic “Sultana’s Dream,” Raven Jackson’s Sundance hit “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” Jaione Camborda’s Toronto platform screener “The Rye Horn” and Tzu-Hui Peng and Ping-Wen Wang’s “A Journey in Spring.” New Talent All of these four films are debuts or sophomore outings in a competition where 10 of the 16 tiles are indeed first or second films.

The American Film Institute on Thursday revealed the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 25-29. It joins the previously announced fest opener, Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, and closer in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story is the Centerpiece film.

Can technology understand romantic relationships? The new film “Fingernails” offers a story based on our growing connections to innovation but offers a posit that flies in the face of conventional dating life in the modern age: love and technology don’t always mix. A couple thinks they’ve found love, as stated by recent tech developments — what it fails to understand might just be the difference between one partner settling or finding a true soulmate.

Caroline Brew editor Jessie Buckley, Jeremy Allen White and Riz Ahmed find themselves caught in a love triangle in the new Apple film “Fingernails,” which debuted its first trailer Tuesday morning. Directed by Christos Nikou and produced by Cate Blanchett, the sci-fi film is set in a not-so-distant future. The story follows Anna (Buckley) and Ryan (White) who use a mathematical, machine-determined proceudre to determine if they are truly in love.

Guy Lodge Film Critic It’s the stock answer that many a happy long-term couple has given prying friends and relatives to explain why they haven’t married: “We don’t need a piece of paper to prove our love.” True enough. What can official documents tell you of something as wily and elusive as human desire? Is a band of gold a safeguard against a change of heart? Of course not, yet millions want it anyway, a ratification of feelings that might otherwise seem slippery or intangible from the outside.

The San Sebastian International Film Festival has long been considered the most intimate of the A-list festivals, neatly wrapping up a hectic fall festival season as delegates descend on the enchanting seaside city in Northern Spain. But in the last few years, the event has cemented itself into a festival reputed for championing new talent and emerging voices across all sections of its programming.  

Christopher Vourlias It’s not every director who gets to turn Cate Blanchett down. Rarer still for a first-time filmmaker from Europe whose arty, offbeat debut — a poetic, surreal, soulful meditation on memory and grief — might have easily escaped the attention of Hollywood royalty. But “Apples,” by Greek director Christos Nikou, charmed audiences after its 2020 premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where Blanchett presided over the main competition jury.

It’s officially September. Summer is winding down, school is starting, and the Fall film festival circuit has kicked off.

TELLURIDE – We’re just gonna get the bad news out of the way first. There is perhaps no movie more personally – and emphasis on “personally” – disappointing at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival for this critic than Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails.” As a big fan of his exquisite 2020 debut, “Apples,” we were crossing our fingers that he’d avoid the dreaded sophomore slump.

The Telluride Film Festival, a key part of the fall festival circuit launching awards season and perhaps some major Academy Award contenders, announced the wide-ranging lineup of films for its landmark 50th edition. The fest kicks off Thursday and runs through Labor Day and will feature world premieres of Oscar winners Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (Focus Features), Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (Amazon) and Free Solo filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative feature Nyad (Netflix).

New works by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kitty Green, and Christos Nikou are among the titles that have been set to play in competition at the upcoming 67th edition of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) London Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list.

Naman Ramachandran The 67th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will compete in its official, first feature, documentary and short film competitions. Festival director Kristy Matheson said: “The films represented in each of these competitive strands offer audiences an exciting array of U.K. and global filmmaking voices and cinematic forms.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Headlined respectively by “Sound of Metal” lead Riz Ahmed and “Matrix” stars Jessica Henwick and Hugo Weaving, Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails” and Kitty Green’s “The Royal Hotel” figure among seven newly unveiled films which will play in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival. Also in the running are buzz titles “A Journey in Spring,” from Taiwan’s Peng Tzu-Hui, Wang Ping-Wen, and “Kalak,” directed by Denmark’s Isabella Eklöf.

Aussie filmmaker Kitty Green’s latest pic, The Royal Hotel, starring Julia Garner, and Fingernails, the latest film from Christos Nikou, with Riz Ahmed and Jessie Buckley, have been added to San Sebastian’s competition lineup.

Christopher Vourlias Celebrating its tenth anniversary as part of the industry program of the Transilvania Film Festival, the Transilvania Pitch Stop — one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for filmmakers from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the wider Black Sea region — will showcase 10 projects by first- and second-time directors searching for potential European partners on June 15 in the historic medieval city of Cluj. The selection, which includes projects from eight countries, is a diverse crop that ranges from intimate personal dramas to stories casting a wider net, capturing their protagonists in the throes of historical forces.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent Cate Blanchett debuted her latest acting role in “The New Boy” at the Cannes Film Festival this week, but the Oscar-winner wouldn’t mind staying behind the camera a bit more. “I’m always trying to get out of acting,” Blanchett said. “I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life.” Speaking at her Kering Women in Motion talk at Cannes, in conversation with her producing partner, Coco Francini, Blanchett said that her recent producing work behind the camera “feels an extension, for me, of my work as an actor.” “I remember an Australian film director saying to me really early on in my career that I had to stop taking small roles,” Blanchett recalled. “And I said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That was the most interesting role.’ I didn’t want to play the lead. I want that one.”

EXCLUSIVE: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are in talks to star in an adaptation of Hamnet for Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions and Book of Shadows. Chloé Zhao will direct the film is based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who will adapt the script with Zhao.

Marta Balaga Nina Kiri, known for her role as Alma on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has joined the cast of dystopian sci-fi adventure “Absolution.” The title will be brought onto the market at Cannes’ Marché du Film Frontières platform, featuring in its Proof of Concept strand.    The Serbian-Canadian actor is no stranger to genre, having appeared in “The Heretics,” “The Haunted House on Kirby Road” or “Let Her Out.” Soon, she will also be spotted in Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails” alongside Jessie Buckley.  Directed by Filip Kovacevic, “Absolution” – a co-production between Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro – takes place in a barren wasteland, far removed from the mythical city of gods, with only one human settlement left. 

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Browning is returning to FilmNation Entertainment as President of Production. He comes aboard at month’s end.

EXCLUSIVE: FilmNation Entertainment and ZQ Entertainment have finalized a multi-year feature film development fund deal.

EXCLUSIVE: Luke Wilson and Annie Murphy are set to join Apple Original Films’ Fingernails. The film currently stars, Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and Jeremy Allen White with Christos Nikou directing. Apple Original Films landed the film at Cannes this year. Cate Blanchett, Coco Francini and Andrew Upton, who were also Executive Producers of Apples, will produce Nikou’s latest alongside FilmNation Entertainment. Jerome Duboz will serve as executive producer. 

EXCLUSIVE: Iain Reid and Jason Schwartzman are adapting Apples — a 2020 Greek film of the same name from Christos Nikou — for the small screen.

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Allen White is continuing to find projects to fill his schedule while his hit FX show The Bear is on hiatus. Sources tell Deadline he is set to join Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed in Apple Original Films Fingernails, the new English-language feature film from award-winning director Christos Nikou.

Oscar winner Florian Zeller (The Father), fresh off Venice Film Festival drama The Son, is launching production firm Blue Morning Pictures with backing from European studio Mediawan (Call My Agent).

Alpha Violet founding co-heads Virginie Devesa and Keiko Funato are in Venice this year with Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak’s first film Autobiography, which plays in Horizons ahead of trips to TIFF and London BFI  among other festivals.

When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival all the way back in 2020, Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou had the unlikeliest movie of the moment with his debut feature “Apples.” The film, produced long before COVID-19 upended the world, dealt with a fictional pandemic in which a mysterious illness causes amnesia. There’s droll comedy and poignant drama alike as protagonist Aris (Aris Servetalis) begins a guided program to recover what he’s lost: his memory.

Christopher Vourlias When Dumitrana Lupu took over as the head of the Transilvania Film Festival’s industry program earlier this year, she was tasked with a two-fold mission of continuing to discover and boost emerging talents from the host country, as well as ensuring that the Romanian festival remains a vital meeting place for filmmakers from Southeastern Europe and the surrounding region.To do so, she and the organizing team revamped some of TIFF’s industry sections while ensuring that long-running programs provide continuity for a festival that unspools its 21st edition from June 17 – 26.With a focus on the Black Sea region and its neighboring countries, the Transilvania Pitch Stop has emerged as one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for the region’s filmmakers. Among the films supported by the TPS since its inception in 2014 include “Apples,” by Greece’s Christos Nikou, which opened the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival; “The Man Who Surprised Everyone,” a Horizons prize winner from Russia’s Alexey Chupov; and “La Civil,” by Teodora Ana Mihai, which won the Prize of Courage in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar last year.