Ep 168: Independent Spirit: The Cinematic Journey of Marcus Markou

Marcus Markou – Writer/ Director/ ProducerMarcus is an independent filmmaker, who successfully self-distributed his debut feature film, Papadopoulos and Sons (starring Stephen Dillane), which he wrote and directed, in 2013, by staging his own cinema release – achieving the second highest screen average of any movie in its opening weekend (only beaten by Oblivion with Tom Cruise) with a P&A budget of just £40k. He used social media and guerrilla tactics such as cold calling every Greek Orthodox priest to announce the movie’s release in the Sunday service before the opening weekend. The movie went on to be bought by Netflix, ARTE, the BBC and many worldwide territories.He has written two plays: Age-Sex-Location (Riverside Studios, 2004) and Ordinary Dreams (2009) and his short films Two Strangers Who Meet Five Times (2017) and Office Song (2019) have notched up over 100 festival screenings between them and over 20 award wins. In 2014 he was nominated by the London Critics Circle Awards for Breakthrough British Filmmaker. His latest feature film, The Wife and Her Househusband, is due for theatrical release in March 2023.W: https://www.doublemfilms.co.uk/productions-1Short Film – Two Strangers Who Meet Five Times:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzKtI9OfEpkPapadopoulos and Sons in the UK on BBCiPlayer:https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04zlzfk/papadopoulos-and-sonsFeature Film – Papadopoulos and Sons – in the United States:https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/papadopoulos-and-sonsFor US listeners living in LA, I am bringing my new feature film “The Wife and Her House Husband” there this Summer… they can sign up on this website for details when tickets go live:https://www.wifehousehusband.com/Also, you can check out my documentary The People of Brixton, on Kwelitv here: https://www.kweli.tv/programs/the-people-of-brixtonDamien Swaby Social Media Links:Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/filmmaker_damien_swaby/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/DamienSwaby?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorWebsitehttp://filmmakingconversations.com/