Greek director George Siougas’ latest movie, The One Note Man, was shortlisted for the Oscars in the category “Live Action Short Film.”
Written, produced, and directed by Siougas, it stars Jason Watkins, Louisa Clein, Crystal Yu, and Paul Barber and is narrated by Ian McKellen.
Watkins plays a bassoonist, who has a strict routine that involves bicycling to an opera house to play one note on his bassoon in an orchestra every day. Aside from the narration, which is brief, the film has no dialogue.
The One Note Man won the Grand Prize for Best Live Action Short Film at the 2023 Rhode Island International Film Festival.
Benjamin Franz of Film Threat gave it a score of 9 out of 10 and wrote, “This is a glorious short film. It’s quite possibly the most enchanting Christmas time fable I have witnessed in years.”
Chris Olson of UK Film Review gave it five stars and wrote, “Irresistibly charming and poignant, short film The One Note Man delivers a rousing tale of one man’s stagnant existence being galvanized by a disruption to his own clockwork routine by a loose thread on his jacket.”
Siougas, the Athens-born director, has won several awards
Siougas is from Athens and moved to the UK to study at the London Film School, where he produced five short films that competed in more than fifty festivals worldwide and won five Grand Prix and four Best Director awards.
Two of these shorts have since been used as examples of high quality and vision in the film school’s curriculum. Siougas returned to Greece in 2002 after being headhunted to direct Close Your Eyes, a number one rated prime-time hour-long weekly drama for Mega TV.
The series went on to become one of the most popular series in the history of Greek TV and won five awards at the 2003 Hellenic TV Awards, including Best Director. After that, George’s TV career took off, and he directed across all platforms for the following ten years.
Burning Heads (aka “To Gala”), his debut feature, was completed in 2012. It was nominated for eleven awards by the Hellenic Film Academy that year, including Best Director. It then went on to win Best Actor and Best Actress awards at Alexandria Film Festival (2012) as well as Best Actor and Best Film in the London Greek Film Festival (2012). In addition, it was selected to close the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival in 2012.
When Greece’s economy collapsed in 2012, Siougas and his family relocated to Cyprus, where he directed several high-end TV dramas over the next four years. In 2015, they relocated to the UK, where he established himself as a sought after director for UK broadcasters.
His Casualty S36, E12 episode was among the four episodes nominated for a BAFTA (2022), and he was also nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award the same year.
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