![]() ![]() “That’s why we wanted to move into cinema,” he says. When he reflects on the early days of the company, which took place in the midst of Greece’s economic downturn, Karnavas recalls the huge number of Greek talents that were popping up in the film sector. “So now that the company is in a healthy position, it’s nice to offer her the possibility to be a part of it.” “Everything we created on the sales side was because of Ioanna’s passion and connections and knowledge of traveling the world and creating relationships,” says Karnavas. She has been a key driver behind the company’s bustling film sales slate which has included Berlin Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn from director Radu Jude, and Omar El Zohairy’s Feathers, which won Cannes Critics’ week in 2021. They hired Ioanna Stais to head up Heretic Sales and recently made the longtime exec partner in the company. ![]() In order to make the business more commercially viable and while weathering the turbulent waters of the ongoing Greek financial crisis at the time, the company diversified its options and moved into the international sales arena. The duo launched Heretic in April 2013 with the initial aim to produce Greek arthouse films, but that model began to change with the evolving landscape. It premiered as the opening-night film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and would unite Karnavas with Kontrovrakis. That film would become Karnavas’ first feature production, Wasted Youth, which was inspired by the shooting of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, one of the events that led to the 2008 Greek riots. “I told him I didn’t know anything about how to produce a film, but he told me, ‘No, you know but you don’t know you know.’” Karnavas started his career in commercials and the music business before his good friend Argyris Papadimitropoulos wanted to make a film and asked him to produce it. ‘Triangle of Sadness’ Coproduction Office Humble beginnings The company is increasingly getting involved in English-language projects but also is keeping its hand in more arthouse, European fare. It’s Heretic’s deep knowledge of European co-productions and shrewd eye for interesting projects - such as Berlin competition title Music, Willem Dafoe starrer Inside (which Focus Features just released domestically to a $510,000 first-weekend tally), Anthony Chen’s Sundance pic Drift and Coky Giedroyc’s upcoming Take That movie Greatest Days – that has seen the company grow from strength to strength since Karnavas co-founded it with partner Konstantinos Kontovrakis 10 years ago. The script was so clever and so cool and the combination of all these things made us overcome the crazy difficulties we had.” “It was challenging but it was such a pleasant experience because I was working with my friends, and I was working with a director who I consider to be one of the heroes of my generation. “Sometimes I don’t know how we did it,” he recalls with a smile. The 77-day shoot would face myriad obstacles (Covid fears aside) such as issues with yachts (“We lost our first initial yacht after we had paid for it,” he says) and tough complications getting American, Filipino and South African actors past Greek borders during the height of the pandemic. Greek Outfit Heretic Promotes Head Of Sales Ioanna Stais To Partnerįor him, the experience culminates the end of a long and “beautiful” journey for Östlund’s first English-language title, which saw Heretic responsible for more than half of the shoot when Covid-restrictions forced the then U.S.-UK-French-Swedish co-production out of Sweden and into Greece’s relatively Covid-free locations in September 2020.īut, as Karnavas knows too well, nothing good comes easy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |