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Tom Hanks is a Hollywood icon, and we’ve all loved him for his roles in Forrest Gump and Cast Away. The actor has cemented himself in the industry with reputable projects and is one of the most revered artists of our time.

Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump | Paramount Pictures

Unfortunately, the most known faces in the world are often easy targets for pinning allegations that spread like wildfire. Hanks has also been accused of some heinous crimes, but is there any truth to these past controversies, or are they all just a hot pile of garbage?

The QAnon fueled controversy about Tom Hanks’ Greek citizenship Tom Hanks in a still from Cast Away (2000) | 20th Century Studios

Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, were officially awarded Greek citizenship in July 2020, a fact that was confirmed by the country’s Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis himself. The couple was given the...

The film tackles the issue of illegal immigration and people trafficking.

Asimina Proedrou’s debut feature Behind The Haystacks swept the board at Greece’s Iris Awards this week, winning the prizes for best film, director, debut director, screenplay, actor, supporting actress and actor, cinematography, editing and sound.

The film is about a family forced to take part in the trafficking of illegal migrants from Turkey to Greece and into the EU.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

It premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in November 2022 where it was awarded the Fipresci prize as well as the best debut director award.

The Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival wrapped its 25th edition with a muted closing night on Sunday, with festival organizers scrapping an official award ceremony as Greece continues to mourn the loss of 57 lives in a deadly rail accident on Feb. 28.

The awards for this year’s festival — including the Golden Alexander, which went to Heba Khaled, Talal Derki and Ali Wajeeh’s “Under the Sky of Damascus” — were handed out behind closed doors earlier in the day.

Artistic director Orestis Andreadakis told Variety prior to the festival’s conclusion, “As a sign of respect, the festival canceled from the very start all ceremonies and festive events. In the same spirit, it was decided to call off the closing ceremony.”

Many of the awarded filmmakers were nevertheless on hand at Thessaloniki’s Olympion cinema on Sunday night, for the world premiere of “My Pet and Me,” by Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan Kramer.

Exclusive: The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Northern Greece will cancel its closing ceremony Sunday as the country continues to mourn following a fatal train crash that killed at least 57 people, Deadline can reveal.

The winners from the festival’s competition strands will be announced virtually on Sunday afternoon through a press release. The competition winners will be photographed with their awards, but there will be no closing ceremony.

Last week, festival organizers also canceled the opening ceremony following the train crash and said the festival would continue, but all “festive events and concerts” would be canceled.

“In these hours of grief and pain, our thoughts are with the families of the victims, to whom we express our most sincere condolences,” the festival said in a statement at the time.

The fatal crash took place in Tempe, north of Athens, and involved a packed commuter train colliding head-on with a freight train at high speed.

Greek prime minister attends festival to highlight incentives for international projects.

Costa Rican director Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams has won the €10,000 Golden Alexander-Theo Angelopoulos prize for best film at Greece’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF) which took place from November 3-13.

The film’s lead actor Reinaldo Amien Gutierrez also won the best actor award at the festival.

The French, Belgian and Costa Rican co-production, which premiered in Locarno, follows a young girl’s coming of age and her relationship with her estranged father. World sales are handled by Greece’s Heretic.

The international competition jury...

The Thessaloniki Film Festival launched its inaugural Agora Series strand on Nov. 10 with a host of international TV executives and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in attendance, highlighting the determination of both the government and the local industry to jump-start the domestic TV sector.

Addressing a full house at the historic Olympion Cinema, where he outlined government efforts to support the Greek screen industries through measures like its 40 cash rebate and a 30 tax relief program, Mitsotakis announced: “We hope that this is just a beginning.”

Buoyed by the cashback scheme, the sun-splashed Mediterranean nation hosted 20 international TV productions last year, according to the prime minister, including the Apple TV Plus spy thriller “Tehran.”

Local production on prestige drama series is ramping up — and foreign buyers are taking notice. Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it had acquired worldwide rights to the drama series “Maestro” (pictured), directed by and starring Christoforos Papakaliatis,...

Vangelis Photo: Ian Patterson, licenced under Creative Commons

From Chariots Of Fire to Blade Runner, some of the most celebrated scores of the past century were created by one man: Greek composer Vangelis, who died on Tuesday from heart failure, at the age of 79. His passing was announced today by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Vangelis' other famous scores include those he wrote for Mel Gibson hit The Bounty, Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest Of Paradise and Oliver Stone's Alexander. He worked extensively on short films, which gave him a lot of freedom to experiment. He also enjoyed popular success in his native country with band The Forminx before going on to form Aphrodite's Child, which released several albums widely acclaimed for pushing musical boundaries. Later in his career he worked as a solo artist and also engaged in numerous collaborations. He was known for his love of unusual.

Vangelis, the Greek prog-rocker and Oscar-winning composer for films like Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner, has died at the age of 79.

The influential artist born Evángelos Papathanassíou died late Tuesday night, a statement from Vangelis’ “private office” announced to his Elsewhere fan page Thursday. The Athens News Agency also confirmed news of Vangelis’ death. No cause of death was provided, but Greek newspaper Ot reports that Vangelis died at a hospital in France where he was being treated for Covid-19.

“Vangelis Papathanassiou was a great Greek composer who excelled at a global level,...

Vangelis, the electronic-music pioneer who won an Oscar for “Chariots of Fire” and composed such other landmark film scores as “Blade Runner,” died Tuesday, the Athens News Agency reported. He was 79.

The self-taught musician enjoyed a long career in European pop music before the magical colors and textures of his 1970s solo albums brought him to the attention of film and TV producers. The use of a track from his 1975 album “Heaven and Hell” as the theme for Carl Sagan’s PBS series “Cosmos” brought his name and music into prominence in America.

But it was his music for the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire” that brought him worldwide fame. Producer David Puttnam made the unorthodox choice for his period sports drama after hearing Vangelis’s music for the French nature documentary “Opera Sauvage” and the studio album “China.”

As he often did, Vangelis performed all of the instruments, including synthesizer,...

Mikis Theodorakis, the Greek composer of acclaimed scores for such films as Zorba the Greek, Z and Serpico, died today at his home in Athens of cardiac arrest. He was 96.

His death was announced on his website. A longtime and outspoken advocate for leftist causes whose opposition to the 1967–1974 Greek junta landed him in prison and then exile in Paris during the late 1960s and early ’70s, Theodorakis saw his considerable body of musical work both banned and celebrated in his home country.

In the wake of his death today, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared three days of national mourning. Theodorakis’ body will lie in state, according to a statement read on Greek state television today.

Though his musical compositions spanned the worlds of ballet, opera, symphonies and the theater, Theodorakis might best be remembered for 1964’s Zorba the Greek, directed by Michael Cacoyiannis and starring Anthony Quinn. In particular,...

With a second lockdown looming amid a spike in coronavirus cases across Greece, Giorgos Karnavas, of production outfit Heretic, knew it was a race against time to wrap shooting on “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire directed by Oscar nominee and Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund.

Production on the Woody Harrelson-starring feature was postponed for three months earlier this year due to Covid-19, and principal photography was underway on the island of Evia and on a yacht in the Ionian sea when bars, restaurants, cinemas, and non-essential stores across this Mediterranean nation were shuttered on Nov. 7 for at least three weeks. (Harrelson, who has already filmed his scenes in Sweden, did not travel to Greece.)

The production team nevertheless received a special permit from the government to continue the shoot, which wraps Nov. 13. “We had the support of multiple Greek authorities during the whole way through,” said Karnavas, who...

Athens-born Fokion Bogris is among the generation of Greeks who have spent most of their adult lives in the shadow of austerity measures and a seemingly never-ending economic crisis. Like many of his country’s filmmakers, the self-taught director, who turned 40 last year, continues to persevere, even as the coronavirus pandemic has compounded the challenges for an already cash-strapped film industry. “In these extreme conditions there is a great drive for cinema, but there is also great pessimism,” he told Variety.

Bogris nevertheless returns with his first feature film in over a decade, “Amercement,” which he directed off a script he co-wrote with Panos Tragos. The film world premieres in the Meet the Neighbors competition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, where it will be available on the fest’s VOD platform on Nov. 8. “Amercement” is produced by Chase the Cut, in collaboration with Authorwave. Chase the Cut is handling world sales.

Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson are now official Greek citizens. The prime minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the news on Instagram over the weekend. Mitsotakis wrote, “@ritawilson @tomhanks are now proud Greek citizens!

Opa! Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson Opa! Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have something to celebrate. The Oscar winner and his famed wife have officially become Greek citizens. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece, confirmed the personal news in an Instagram post he shared on Saturday along with a photo of the two stars holding up their Greek passports. "@ritawilson @tomhanks are now proud Greek citizens!" Mitsotakis captioned the photo. While it's unclear when the picture was taken, the two actors did jet off to Greece earlier this month in celebration of the Forrest Gump star's 64th birthday. At the end of last year, he...