Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Kostas Nikouli, the bright young star of XENIA the award- winning film which was also the Greek submission for an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Kostas was in London recently with his girlfriend for a special advance screening of this remarkable film.

Kostas, like his character 16-year-old Dany, is from an Albanian background but he was brought up in Greece. He was at high school in Athens when he first heard about the casting for the film.

“We had a theatre company at school and I had already decided I wanted to become an actor when I heard that Panos H. Koutras, the director of XENIA, was looking for teenage boys with an Albanian background who could speak both Greek and Albanian in the film. I went for a casting and that took over a year – I went back 6 times and the last time I was paired with Nikos Gelia, who plays the brother Odysseas. Panos saw over three thousand boys before he offered me the role. Then the rehearsals started with improvisations with the other actors for about six months before the shooting began. The filming lasted about two and a half months and Panos was very open for suggestions from the actors.”

Kostas’s relationship with Nikos who plays his brother is also very impressive and it builds up as the film develops despite the fact the shooting was not done chronologically.

“The filming was broken down because we had to go to different locations – we had to go to Northern Greece in Larissa and Thessaloniki. But we had to finish all the scenes in Athens before we moved on to the North and the climactic sequence was filmed in a villa in Athens rather than in Thessaloniki. My relationship with Nikos was building up naturally – we even shared a room – and the journey that Dany and Odysseas were experiencing was reflecting our own.”

The title of the film XENIA which means hospitality is very ironic and very relevant to what is happening to migrants in Greece at the moment.

“The word comes from Xenios Zeus who says that if there is a stranger outside your home you take him in and give him hospitality and the good thing about the film is that Panos talks about serious issues but with a lighter touch and not with darkness. Dany even though he is only 16 knows exactly what he wants and is desperate to have the Greek identity card that many immigrants are longing for even though some of them are born in Greece.”

Kostas and his girlfriend are currently at their final year in an Athens Drama School and have dreams of working together in the theatre and making more films.

“The highlight of making this film was the dance sequence in the hotel which was filmed in Kozani and also going to the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival where there was 3 minute applause at the end – a very moving and exhilarating experience”.

XENIA is now available on DVD from Peccadillo Pictures.

By George Savvides