Nicholas Franghias

Niko Franghias is an award-winning visual storyteller (writer-director-producer) who studied in Britain's Croydon College, School of Art & Design. After a six-month stint with the BBC, he worked in Greece's major advertising Agency JNL Leoussis as an agency producer, visual copywriter, and director (1989-1994), and, then both in advertising and film as a freelancer (1994-2007). A number of his collaborations are winners of the Advertising Creativity Festival in Greece, reaching the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France. In film, he debuted in 1990 as a writer-director with the 30 min 639+1 Nights. He followed in 1996 by writing, designing and directing the feature documentary Made by Lysippos, on the story and the art of Alexander the Great's image-maker. Awards: best screenplay in the 1st 'Agon' International Film Festival of Archaeological Films in Greece, and the audience award at the 6th International 'ArcheoFilmFest' in Italy. The film has screened all over Europe and is still popular today as a unique visual approach to an archaeological subject; in 2016, it received multiple exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Niko has participated in the dramaturgy workshops of Jan Fleischer (head of Screenwriting Dept., National Film & Television School, UK), the Mediterranean Film Institute with Lewis Cole and Nicholas T. Proferes (Professors, Film Division, Columbia University, New York, USA), and at the London based Arista Story Development Workshop. He has won major production-development awards from the Greek Film Centre (Greece's official State film agency) and the Media Program of the European Union for his three English-speaking features, projects which unraveled as the funding situation in Greece became steadily worse. He started over by moving to the USA. In January 2011, at the request of Chicago's Greek Community and with the support of the Consulate General of Greece in Chicago, Franghias co-founded FilmHellenes-Greek Film Fest Chicago, a 501 C3 non-profit corporation with the mission of celebrating Greek filmmaking talent from around the world. While the festival was relatively new, it had a significant impact on the arts and cinema scene, including a prestigious collaboration with Chicago's world renown Gene Siskel Film Centre, the Columbia College, the National Hellenic Museum, and a sister film festival hosted by the University of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Within Franghias' three years of full-time voluntary Community work as the FilmHellenes chairman and chief programmer, the festival exhibited the works of sixty-five filmmakers from Greece, Cyprus, and the world. Franghias managed a 16-member board of directors and a plethora of volunteers. Under his voluntary capacity, Niko has been interviewed by National Public Radio's WBEZ, has written articles at the request of the Greek Star (the oldest Greek-American journal in the U.S.), and has joined the Juries of the 2012 and 2013 Toronto-based Greek Short Film Festivals at their request. The festival also introduced an annual Honorary Award event, honoring Academy Award-winning Director of Hellenic ancestry Alexander Payne in 2012. The honoree for 2013 was literary icon, Harry Mark Petrakis. In November 2013, Niko received his E16 work-permit and permanent residence status. Consequently, he stepped down from the festival in order to focus on his filmmaking activities. He became a US citizen in 2019.