Nikos Tzimas

Nikos Tzimas has directed six feature length and two short films to date, three of them with historical content. All have enjoyed wide popular appeal and commercial success. He has participated in International Film Festivals, such as Cannes, Moscow, Thessaloniki etc., and has won 6 Best Film awards. One of his films was nominated for the Oscar of the Best Foreign Language Film. As a producer he has 55 films and 8 television series to his credit via his company Athens Films Production. Nicos Tzimas was born in Zalongo, southwest Epirus, Greece. He studied film direction and during his study years he directed two short and one feature length film. "For these heroines": The film was awarded with the Best Short Film award at the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki. It was directed in his village and depicted the hard lives of the women in the Greek countryside. "The girl with the radio": It was also awarded with the Best Short Film award at the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki. "The Young want to live": Nicos Tzimas' first feature length movie. The movie represented Greece in Moscow International Film Festival and received the award for the Best Debut Director. The movie's screening was prohibited by the Greek military Junta, since the music of the film was conducted by Mikis Theodorakis, who was jailed and exiled. The movie is about a man from Epirus coming to Athens in hopes of entering the University and becoming a mathematician. However, he is urged to migrate to Germany in order to become a worker as he faces unemployment. "The lovers' Tomb": It was the Greek entry in Cannes Film Festival, which was eventually canceled due to May 1968 events in France. The film was prohibited by the Greek Military Junta while Nicos Tzimas was arrested, tortured and sent to jail by the Greek military Junta. He was convicted for 5 years but after 6 months he was set free due to General Amnesty act. The movie is about an impassioned love triangle that took place in a small village of Epirus. "Thunderjohn": The money that the previous movie earned due to its worldwide distribution allowed Nicos Tzimas to make his first high-cost movie with historical content. It received the Best Film, Best Production and Best Actor awards at the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki. The movie is set amid the agricultural uprisings that took place in Greece in 1912. "The man with the carnation": It was awarded with the Grand Jury Prize at Moscow International Film Festival. It received the Best Film award at FIPRESI and the Best Film award at the International Film Festival of Thessaloniki. It was nominated for the Oscar of Best Foreign Language Film at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. The film set a box office record and achieved worldwide distribution. In the US, it achieved the first place in box office among foreign films. The film is set in the beginning of the Cold War while McCarthyism raged in the US. CIA was the dominant power in Greece and had under its influence many politicians and army officers. Nicos Beloyannis, an idealist, was convicted for espionage and was sentenced to death. Even though the Prime Minister intended to give pardon to Beloyannis, a secret military organization, led by the imminent dictator Yorgos Papadopoulos, executed him at 4 in the night. The Prime Minister heard about his death the next morning. After several months, his government was subverted. "The Years of the Tempest": It received the Best Film award at the Festival of Valencia and the Best Screenplay award at the Festival of Corfu. The film is about a Greek-American professor returning to his village in Epirus at the end of 1930's, between the second World War and the Greek Civil War. "The Flight of the Swan": Alexis is an explosive personality, passionate about life, humanity, nature, love and beauty. That is until the breakneck rhythm, intensity, stress and convolutions of career and economic success shatter him, alienating him from everyone and everything he loves: even his children and his soul mate Maria. Alexis is jolted back to reality when the unbridled greed of the multinational conglomerate his company is involved in causes an unprecedented ecological catastrophe costing many human lives. The multinational's Golden Boy suddenly realizes that he is nothing more than a cog in the machine he had fought so passionately against in his youth. He is determined to rediscover himself, to reclaim his soul, to rebuild the dream with Maria - but he is completely trapped. He is caught in a web of intrigue that tightens like a vice driving him to an inevitably lethal conflict with the conglomerate. The story quickly evolves into a nerve rending adventure with driving action, relentless conflicts, unexpected reversals, insurmountable dilemmas and volatile internal pressures all leading to the triumph of love, friendship, beauty and life.