Ioannis Makro

Ioannis Makro
Makro at the 13th Film Olympiad Grand Prix
Founder & Chairman of Film Olympiad
Incumbent
Assumed office 2021
Personal details
Born	Ioannis Makropoulos (1991-11-20) November 20, 1991 Athens, Greece
Education	Panteion University
Occupation	Actor director writer
Website	Portfolio Instagram Film Olympiad Website
Total film awards and nominations Awards and nominations Award Wins Nominations for Best Film 4 9 for Directing 1 3 for Writing 4 8 for Acting 6 13 for Technical categories 3 7 Totals[a] Wins 18 Nominations 40 Note ^ Certain award groups do not simply award one winner. They acknowledge several different recipients, have runners-up, and have third place. Since this is a specific recognition and is different from losing an award, runner-up mentions are considered wins in this award tally. For simplification and to avoid errors, each award in this list has been presumed to have had a prior nomination.

Ioannis Makro (born Ioannis Makropoulos; November 20, 1991) is a Greek filmmaker, actor, and director. He is best known as the founder and chairman of the Film Olympiad, an international film festival and competition—also known as the Olympiad for Filmmakers—launched in 2021. The festival has featured Oscar winners, nominees, and Hollywood icons including Zoe Saldana, Colman Domingo, Lily Gladstone, and Kevin Bacon.^[1]

Makro has appeared in over 20 theatrical productions in Athens since the age of 17. His four short films have received 18 awards and 40 nominations at international film festivals, including multiple awards for directing, screenplay and acting.

He has also directed and produced over 120 commercial and promotional videos for global clients, such as the World Chess Federation, Metaxa, York University, whilst collaborating with leading international TV networks such as Eurosport, BBC, NBC, with his work broadcast to audiences of hundreds of millions. Among the key highlights is his work as a director and consulting producer at the 2018 World Chess Championship, in London.^[2]

Makro was the creator and co-coordinator of the online chess project Checkmate Coronavirus, organized by FIDE (the International Chess Federation). With 517,661 participations across 2,762 tournaments during a 30-day marathon, it is considered the largest sports event in history in terms of participation organized by any international sports federation.^[3]

Drawing on a multidisciplinary career, Makro's work is often characterized by innovation, deep audience engagement, an avant-garde sensibility, and a strong commitment to transparency – principles reflected across his artistic and commercial projects, as well as in his approach to event organization. He has worked professionally in over a dozen countries across all continents, including India, Canada, the UAE, and Fiji, with many of his projects filmed in iconic locations and UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as the British Museum, the Budapest Castle and National Gallery, and the Mahabalipuram Temple complex in Chennai, India. During his youth years, he was also a member of the Greek Youth Parliament and of the Euroscola Hub of the European Parliament.

In 2021, Ioannis Makro founded the Film Olympiad, an international film festival and competition described as "the Olympiad for Filmmakers." The event aims to bring quality cinema to wider audiences, by employing the excitement of competitions with good sportsmanship, and to award excellence in filmmaking and its multiple disciplines.

The Film Olympiad distinguishes itself from other festivals through three main elements:

1. A prestigious brand identity, including the awarding of Film Olympiad Medals.
2. A unique, sports-like competition system that introduces excitement and transparency into the judging process, allowing quality films to reach broader audiences beyond the typical cinephile community.
3. The publication of detailed ratings for all participating films, promoting radical honesty, transparency, and constructive feedback—especially for emerging filmmakers.

As of 2025, the Film Olympiad has hosted 14 Grand Prix competitions and two biennial Superfinals, with over 1,100 short films from 106 countries across all continents. The festival accepts short fiction, documentary, animation, and experimental works, including several Oscar-nominated films.

Among its nominees and awardees are renowned international figures such as actors Zoe Saldaña, Colman Domingo, Lily Gladstone, Kevin Bacon, and acclaimed directors Bogdan Mureșanu, Doug Roland, and Farah Nabulsi. The festival has also recognized prominent Greek artists, including Lena Papaligoura, Elli Tringou, Konstantinos Markoulakis, Thanasis Neofotistos, and Antonis Vallindras.^[4][5]

Ioannis Makropoulos was born in 1991 in Athens and is of Greek, Romanian, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Italian descent, coming from a family of chess players. His mother, Marina Makropoulou, and his grandmother, Maria Albuleț, were both former top 20 female chess players in the world, and collectively won thirteen national Romanian or Greek chess championships.

He holds a Master of Arts in Media Communication & Rhetoric (Magna Cum Laude) and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and History from Panteion University. He also graduated from the Theatre Drama School "Prova" with Summa Cum Laude honors.^[6] During his youth years, he was also a member of the Greek Youth Parliament and of the Euroscola Hub of the European Parliament.

Makro attributes a major influence on his work to Andreas Manolikakis, former Chairman of the Actors Studio Drama School, and his seminars on Method Acting and the Stanislavski system. He also credits the impact of live and online masterclasses with renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog, acclaimed for his documentaries and narrative films worldwide.

At the age of 17, Ioannis Makro directed his first amateur performance. Over the next five years, he directed eight such amateur productions, experimenting with directing methods and working with hundreds of amateur performers. His repertoire included plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

At the age of 21, he presented his first professional production—an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The production ran for two years, and featured an innovative approach: in each show, the role of Alice was assigned to a random audience member. For the first time in recorded theatre history, one different spectator in each performance was holding the leading role, without prior rehearsal, would speak, sing, dance, and engage in choreographed sword fights for 90 minutes on stage, in a highly improvised show.^[7]

Following the success of Alice in Wonderland, Makro directed a multitude of performances, beginning with his collaboration with renowned cinema critic, director, writer, and publisher Yannis Soldatos in the performance series Sacred Prostitute. These performances marked Makro's debut as a writer, featuring his one-act plays Lucy and Medea.^[8] Other key highlights in the following years included productions such as Hotel Paradiso by Georges Feydeau,^[9] and the interactive performance Vive La Femme, a hybrid of bar theatre and flash mob. In this production, the actresses appeared spontaneously in various cafés and bars across Athens, with the unsuspecting audience unaware that a performance was underway. Their interactions included texts by female writers such as Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvoir, Sappho, and Rosa Luxemburg, giving voice to the historically underrepresented women.^[10]

In 2017, Ioannis Makro began a collaboration with Monica Savulescu Voudouri and the bilingual theatre Thalia Diaspora, which presents performances in Romanian and Greek for the Romanian diaspora. Up to 2025, this collaboration has resulted in nine performances featuring Makro as an actor and video producer, in a significant repertoire that includes plays by writers such as Eugène Ionesco, Matei Vișniec, Ion Luca Caragiale, and others.^[11]

In 2023, Ioannis Makro created the interactive performance Erotico Manifesto, which combines elements of stand-up comedy, improvisation, and audience participation. The show continues to run as of 2025, built around the central concept that "the world will be destroyed in one hour unless we fall in love." It features texts and poetry by writers such as William Shakespeare, Frida Kahlo, George Seferis, Kahlil Gibran, and others.^[12]

Longstanding theatre critic Leandros Polenakis described the performance in the historic newspaper Avgi as a "a cathartic, purifying, initiatory ritual" in an article for the "new blood" of Greek theatre.^[13]

Ioannis Makro has directed four short films have received 18 awards and 40 nominations at international film festivals. In various capacities, he has personally received 12 awards and 25 nominations. His films have featured iconic actors such as Eleni Gerasimidou and Takis Papammattheou. Remarkably, eight out of the nine actors with leading or significant supporting roles have received awards or nominations for their performances in his films. Short film

• 
  Ioannis Makro during film shooting in London with Anna Rudolph

• You Know Beautifully to Kill, 2024, (Ξέρεις Ωραία να Σκοτώνεις) Kyverti Books "Ξέρεις ωραία να σκοτώνεις". ^[18]

• Alice in Wonderland, 2012 – adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s original work (Η Αλίκη στην Χώρα των Θαυμάτων)
• Lucy, 2013 – one-act play (Lucy)
• Medea, 2014 – one-act play (Μήδεια), part of the Sacred Prostitute theatre play, co-written with Giannis Soldatos, Aigokeros Books^[19]
• Vive La Femme, 2019 (Vive La Femme)
• Erotico Manifesto, 2025 (Ερωτικό Μανιφέστο)

• Hotel Paradiso, 2014, by Georges Feydeau, Aigokeros Books (Ξενοδοχείο Παράδεισος)^[20]
• Titanic Waltz, 2019, by Tudor Mușatescu (co-translator)
• De Profundis, 2025, by Oscar Wilde (Εκ βαθέων)

In 2020, Ioannis Makro invited to participate in the Cinefreaks.gr nationwide film poll, in which artists from across Greece listed their favourite films that had most influenced them.^[21] He selected ten titles, limiting himself to one work per director and counting The Godfather Parts I and II as a single entry.