Neos Kosmos — Tsatsiki, Dad and the Olive War is the last of a film trilogy based on a successful series of books by Swedish author Moni Nilsson.
The story was adapted into a screenplay by Ella Lemhagen and directed by Lisa James Larsson.
The first blockbuster movie, Tsatsiki, Mom and the Policeman, which was released in 1999, won the Crystal Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and enthused international audiences.
In the first film, the main character is Tobias Johansson and is played by an 11-year-old boy. His mother is Swedish and his father is Greek, hence his nickname, Tsatsiki.
Little Tsatsiki, who has grown up in Sweden, dreams of going to Greece to reunite with his father, a local fisherman. The boy befriends a nice but straight-laced motorcycle policeman renting one of their rooms and decides he is the right guy for his mother, who is an amateur rock singer in love with her band’s bass player.
In the Friends Forever sequel which was released in 2001, Tsatsiki and his mother end up in the very same Greek village where Tsatsiki was conceived over a decade earlier.
In the third film, which was filmed almost entirely in Greece, the boy finally arrives in Crete only to discover that his father is preparing to sell his small business due to the economic crisis.
With the help of his 12-year-old girlfriend Alva, Tsatsiki susses a plan to save the family business as well as the entire village from bankruptcy.
Starring alongside Adam Gutniak, Sara Vilén, Liv Mjönes, Jonatan Rodriguez and Christine Meltzer, Emrik Ekholm will play Tsatsiki 16 years after the first adaptation.
“It will be the best film ever, as Tsatsiki would say – now it is almost unreal to watch Tsatsiki, Hammarn and Alva stepping out of the pages,” said Nilsson.
“I want to breathe life into Moni’s script with humour, energy and respect for her wonderful characters,” added Larsson, who wishes to make “a warm and entertaining film for the whole family”.
