Almost seven years after he successfully broke onto the Greek cinema landscape, Costas Kapakas is again busy directing. Filming began on his second feature, Uranya, on the island of Crete earlier this month.

Kapakas also wrote the film’s script, which tells the story of a small Cretan village going about its business in the summer of 1969, before an imminent visit by the US Vice President Spiro Agnew, who decides to return to the land of his ancestors, and the landing of the first men on the moon that forces the villagers to buy the first TV set in the region.

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Uranya was the brand name of the first television sets in Greece at the end of the 1960s as well as the name of the film’s lead female character, played by Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta, and therefore, as Kapakas admits, "the movie title came only naturally".

Kapakas’ first feature, Peppermint (1999), starred, among others, French-Greek actor Georges Corraface, the current president of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Uranya is a Greek/Italian co-production between Greece’s Cinegram and Italian company Panorama Films, with the support of the Greek Film Centre. Kapakas hopes that the experience of the film’s producers and an international cast will help his nostalgic comedy at home and abroad. The film’s producer Dionysis Samiotis has 19 film credits to his name, including Greece’s most recent domestic and international success, Tasos Boulmetis’ A Touch of Spice (Politiki Kouzina) from 2003, also starring Corraface.

Uranya is expected to be completed for a Christmas release this year. It will be distributed by Odeon Films Greece.