Nikos Foskolos

Nikolaos Foskolos (; 26 November 1927 – 30 October 2013) was a Greek director, screenwriter, playwright, film critic and novelist. He is one of the most commercially successful screenwriters of Greek cinema. He has been called the "Goldfinger of commercial shows". He has been described as "the maître of exaggeration" and "the king of TV shows". His film Ipolochagos Natassa kept the most commercially successful film record for almost three decades from 1970 to 1999.

Life and career Nikolaos Foskolos was born on 26 November 1927, in Irakleio, Attica. He studied Political Science at the University of Athens but did not graduate. Foskolos has been described as an "important screenwriter", a "talented director", a "wonderful human being" and "the father of TV-serials and films". Ta Nea refers to him as "hyperproductive". The same paper also calls him polygrafotatos translating as "a prolific writer".

Foskolos married three times, with his first wife, Ekaterini, they had a son, Spyros (b. 1951), and with his second, Eleni, they had a daughter, Dela (b. 1963). Eleni passed away in January 2020. He married actress Tonia Vithoulka in 1987.

He was taken to Evangelismos Hospital in the early hours of 30 October 2013, and died from complications of gastrointestinal bleeding, at age 85. He was buried in Municipal Cemetery Heliopolis on 1 November 2013.

Interview In a 1999 interview to the Vima newspaper, Foskolos said that he wonders if the political reality in Greece has surpassed even his own screenplays and said that he thinks that Greek society has "fallen into a vertical aquarium of corruption". He said than in one scene of his film Koinonia, Ora Miden (Society, Hour Zero) a corrupt politician offers millions to Nikos Kourkoulos, who was playing the role of the honest hero of the film, to buy his silence for a crime committed by his cohorts. The politician told the hero that the price they had to pay was selling their conscience for their livelihood. Foskolos then remarked that the story he wrote for the film turned out to be prescient in the years that followed.

Awards Foskolos has received awards for The Asphalt Fever (Πυρετός στην άσφαλτο), and The Ruthless (Οι αδίστακτοι). His film Blood on the Land (Το χώμα βάφτηκε κόκκινο) was an Academy Awards Best Foreign Film nominee in 1965. He also received three awards and a state award for Concert for Machine Guns (Κοντσέρτο για πολυβόλα).