Fortune Cookie

A man wearing a bandage steals all the fortune cookies from a chinese restaurant. This fires the owner's superstition to believe that this was something unfortunate. The idea of bad luck spreads around the restaurant. The employee of the shoe store next door is the first to anticipate the consequences of this misconception. Two more characters will face respectively other types of bad luck during their day. An old man stays as a witness and an informer of the events to the viewer's eye from the beginning and until the end.

  • Evgenios Chasiotis
    Director
  • Anastasios Chatzis
    Director
    Director of Photography
  • Evgenios Chasiotis
    Writer
  • Evgenios Chasiotis
    Producer
    Ha-Ha productions
  • Anastasios Chatzis
    Producer
    Ha-Ha productions
  • Konstandinos Maniatis
    Key Cast
    "Kostas"
  • Maria Maniati
    Key Cast
    "Maria"
  • Magdalini Gioka
    Key Cast
    "Anna"
  • Yiannis Chasiotis
    Key Cast
    "Old man"
  • Anastasios Chatzis
    Key Cast
    "Unlucky Steven"
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Comedy, experimental, drama
  • Runtime:
    20 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 12, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Greece
  • Country of Filming:
    Greece
  • Language:
    Modern Greek (1453-)
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16Χ9 & 4Χ3
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Evgenios Chasiotis, Anastasios Chatzis

Evgenios Chasiotis was born in Athens, Greece in 1992. He is a visual artist and educational. Until 2015 he was focused in the areas of video art and experimental video making. Since that time he has collaborated with artists from the fields of theatre, dance, cinema and music. Until 2022 he has written six short films and one feature film.

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Director Statement

Fortune Cookie is a collage of older ideas and experimentations we had with the director of photography, Tasos Chatzis, combined into a new type of a non linear story based on four new characters. The archival material focuses on "Unlucky Steven", a characterization derived from the slang term "Average Joe". Unlucky Steven binds the idea of bad luck and superstition spreading it unwittingly to the four other characters of the film. What we get from the characters is their alternative approaches to their individual faith and the ways they conceive it.
My intention was to show the beginning of an average misconception. A misconception that wheels to be something bigger than it really is, as it happens in real life and eventually fails. The idea of fortune and faith finds its bond to the Asian and Chinese culture to which is known to be connected through the years. Thus I tried to use it as a clue both to the story and to the aesthetic of the image. The combination of the handheld camera motion and the idea of showing the characters' instability whether they walk, run or stand alongside with their struggle is inspired by films such as Chungking Express and Fallen Angels and stood as the initial thought of creating this project all along.