Minore is an action horror comedy by award-winning director and Oscar-winning visual effects wizard, Konstantinos Koutsoliotas. Filmed on location in Athens, Greece, it’s a quirky adventure, packed with local flavour and oddities, during which, on a steamy summer night, a sudden mist descends and eerie otherworldly creatures attack the people of a coastal town.
Maltese actor and model Davide Tucci is playing the lead role, William, a lost sailor with a passion for music in search of his wayward father. He joins forces with a misfit band of musicians, a waitress, a bodybuilder, their granny, some local criminals, and an undead priest to battle slime and tentacles for their survival.
“Imagine a lovecraftian monster film… but make it musical. Greek. Whacky. And weirdly beautiful. That’s Minore – and I had an absolute blast starring in it,” smiles Tucci.
“This might be the strangest film I’ve ever done, but it’s also one of the most fun, ambitious, and heartfelt projects I’ve been part of.”
“My first encounter with Konstantinos Koutsoliotas & Elizabeth E. Schuch, the core creative team wasn’t in Athens – it was in Malta, on an intense docu-drama called God’s Soldiers, a retelling of the Great Siege of Malta and amidst the chaos, something clicked. A creative bond was forged. Months later, I got an email about a new project: a Greek monster movie by the name of Minore.”
“I received the script and thought, ‘What on earth is this madness?’ Sea creatures. Tentacles. Musicians. Bouzoukis. Doom. Laughter. Genres colliding like a shipwreck in a Greek taverna.”
“I had never read anything quite like it. It was horror, comedy, satire, musical, sci-fi – and all delivered with a wink. And yet, underneath the tentacles, there was something that felt deeply human. A story about identity, family, roots. That’s what grabbed me. That’s what made me say yes.”
“So off I went to Athens. Two months of shooting in the blistering July heat with a wild, wonderful cast and crew. And yes, I fell in love – with the country, the food, the lifestyle, the freddo espresso.”
“I also fell in love with William, the character I play. A quiet sailor with a big heart, on a quest to find his long-lost Greek father, armed with nothing but a name and a bouzouki. A character who longs to understand where he comes from, and maybe, by extension, who he really is.”
It is this universal theme which underpins the film’s success, and explains why it’s already found a loyal cult following since its world premiere in 2023, from FrightFest in London to Fantaspoa in Brazil, from LA and Berlin to the iconic Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Tucci is now very much looking forward to its official public release here in Malta at Spazju Kreattiv next week (August 1 and 2).
“When the idea came up to bring Minore to Maltese audiences, I knew one thing,” he laughs. “It had to be in summer. Because Malta and Greece share more than just a common body of water – we share a soul. A fire. A stubborn Mediterranean rhythm. We shot the film under the scorching sun of July, and now we’ll screen it in the thick of Malta’s August heat. But don’t worry, the cinema at Spazju Kreattiv is fully air-conditioned!”
On the first evening (August 1), after the screening, Tucci will be answering questions from the audience in person, with Konstantinos Koutsoliotas & Elizabeth E. Schuch contributing over video link.
“There are lots of parallels between Greece and Malta,” Tucci continues. “The Mediterranean characters in the film are like those in real life. Big, expansive and often eccentric. In the heat of the moment, people overact. William, however, provides a balance, navigating his path through these colourful characters, and, despite not knowing who he is, he is very normal, level-headed and light-hearted and he has a stupid sense of humour.”
The filming was, he laughs, equally funny because the CGI effects were added post-production, so there were many occasions where Tucci found himself ‘acting against nothing’, reacting to invisible monsters whose tentacles were only present in his imagination.
“If you love monsters, Mediterranean chaos, and seeing me get absolutely walloped by tentacles, come join us. If you’re looking for a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but somehow still hits something true, Minore might just be your thing. And if nothing else… come for the slime.”
And it is by blending the enthusiastic (if somewhat uncommon) combination of fantasy cinema and Mediterranean folklore, with a dose of black humour and stirring music, that Minore is a light-hearted metaphor for people working together to face the existential and the very real crises we are facing in the world today, director Koutsoliotas explains.
“Whether it’s a fearsome viral plague or economic catastrophe when monsters appear in our midst and seek to destroy the fabric of reality and our way of life: the only to keep our sanity is to live in the moment and dance our fears away.”
Book your tickets here.
