“A Party for Nikos” is a feature documentary about the life of Nikos Kazantzakis being developed by EntertainingTV.

A Party for Nikos is a film-styled documentary about Nikos Kazantzakis’s life, told through stories, pictures, and archive. His life-story runs in tandem with a fictionalised setting of a young man who happens upon a party, and meets all the extraordinary characters there, who then become the storytellers of Nikos’s life, as they wait for Nikos to arrive.

It is 1957, and a young man, Michael, leaves England to find out more about Nikos Kazantzakis, the prolific Greek writer, philosopher, and author of ‘Last Temptation’ and ‘Zorba the Greek’.

When Michael arrives in Crete, he is introduced to an old man, Dimitri, who tells him that he has travelled with perfect timing as he is hosting a surprise party for Nikos that very evening.

Later that day, Michael arrives at a large house to find tables set out on a large terrace overlooking the sea. He is early, and so is introduced to Dimitri’s rather sullen granddaughter, Maria, who reluctantly shows him around the house. In one room he is introduced to Dimitri’s wife, who tells how Dimitri and Nikos used to play together when younger. With the help of pictures, she then explains how Nikos grew up in times of political conflict. Her stories are so powerful and evocative that Michael begins to visualise the landscape of Nikos’s turbulent early life.

As the evening progresses and more guests arrive, Michael is passed from one storyteller to another, with stories recounted from different parts of Nikos’s life – his great travels around Europe and China as a journalist – his radical politic -, the loves of his life and then finally to the battle he had when he dared question religion. In between these tales, Michael becomes infatuated by Maria, who he eventually confronts just at the moment Nikos Kazantzakis is due to arrive.