Cult movie director Paul Kyriazi is back, after a 30 year absence from feature films, with twenty-eight first-place, international film festival awards and a totally original concept: A young man has a one-night stand with a beautiful woman and wakes up with enhanced physical and mental powers.
In other movies, such as Limitless, LUCY and Wolf, the hero’s powers comes from drugs or animal bite. But the hero in Forbidden Power gets his new powers from sexual contact. Then, he’s left with a cryptic message written in lipstick on his mirror: short – red- train. He goes on a search for the woman to find out where she got her exceptional powers and why she chose him to pass it onto.
Forbidden Power’s list of awards includes; five for Best Screenplay, including one from Florence, Italy, two Best Actor each for the three leads and Best Picture at the NYC Cinematographer awards, which was helped by filming with the RED Dragon digital camera that was used on Gone Girl & Jurassic World. (List of awards below)
In his past movies, Death Machines, Ninja Busters, Weapons of Death & Omega Cop, Kyriazi always had a weird story slant to the action and an ambition beyond what his budgets would seem to allow. Omega Cop, for example, had Adam (Batman) West, Troy Donahue and Academy Award nominee Stuart Whitman in the cast.
Forbidden Power has a train wreck that knocks over the Statue of liberty replica of the New York, New York Hotel in Las Vegas. This happens in the middle of the movie to “keep the audience awake”, Kyriazi says. Other techniques to keep people from turning channels is a ‘quickly unfolding story, weird and surprising action, changes of location; San Francisco, Seattle, Arizona, Las Vegas, and six beautiful women that are introduced throughout the movie.
When asked, “Why did you wait thirty years to make another movie?” Kyriazi replied. “Two important things happened. Digital production is more efficient and less expensive than film. And most important, in the past distributors of my movies never sent my percentage to me. Nothing. Zero. Now with Amazon and Vimeo, I get daily reports and monthly deposits into my bank.”
Forbidden Power is available for streaming on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2nszuEJ and Vimeo: https://goo.gl/1AL6cL
Below is the list of all the first-place festival wins. (All festivals are IMDB sanctioned.)
2018 – Las Vegas International Action on Film Mega-Fest, competing with over 600 movies: BEST YOUNG PERFORMER – Kaiya Grey – BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS – Aaron Amort & Preston Sawyer.
2018 – International BITB Hollywood Film Festival, competing with over 1,000 movies: BEST PICTURE – BEST DIRECTOR Paul Kyriazi – BEST ACTOR Lincoln Bevers – BEST ACTRESS -Nasanin Nuri
2019 – London Flicks Festival: BEST THRILLER – BEST ACTOR Lincoln Bevers – BEST ACTRESS Nasanin Nuri – BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Hannah Janssen – BEST PRODUCERS Bruce Dowling, Jan Van Tassell, Conrad Denke, Harry Mok.
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION – Oklahoma BB Film Festival.
2019 – BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – Florence Film Awards Italy.
2019 – BEST FEATURE FILM – New York Cinematography Awards.
2019 – BEST FEATURE LONG NARRATIVE – American Golden Picture International Film Festival Jacksonville, Florida.
2019 – BEST DIRECTOR – Diamond Film Awards Battipaglia Italy.
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION – International Festigious Awards Los Angeles.
2019 – BEST PRODUCED SCREENPLAY – Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION FEATURE FILM – Horror Bowl Sci-Fi Thriller Festival INDIA
2019 – BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – Hollywood Blood Horror Festival
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION – Oniros Festival – Saint Vincent Italy
2019 – Global Film Festival Awards Los Angeles:
BEST PRODUCED SCREENPLAY – Paul Kyriazi
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Hannah Janssen
BEST TRAILER – Jon-Paul Durant
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION – Los Angeles Film Awards
2019 – BEST SCIENCE FICTION – American Filmatic Arts Awards New York
2020 – BEST SUPORTING ACTOR Harry Mok – Best Actor Awards Aosta, Italy
2020 – BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – New York Movie Awards
Paul Kyriazi saw ‘The Making of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ when he was eight years old and decided to make movies. Two of his university karate action movies won the Berkeley Film Festival. He got a BA in Film, shot movies for the Nasa Space Program and wrote / directed seven feature films.
He produced five full-cast audio-books with 20 movie stars such as Rod Taylor, Robert Culp, David Hedison, Russ Tamblyn & George Chakiris. His 2018 movie Forbidden Power won 28 first-place, international awards.