‘Fingernails’ first look: Apple drama starring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White gets fall release date

Christopher Rosen
·3 min read
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Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley, Oscar winner Riz Ahmed, and Emmy nominee Jeremy Allen White form a complicated love triangle in the new Apple Original Films drama “Fingernails,” which the studio is set to debut this fall after a run through festival season.

On Wednesday, Apple debuted the first images from the project as well as its release date: October 27 in limited release in New York and Los Angeles before a bow on the Apple TV+ streaming service (and other theaters) starting on November 3.

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Co-written and directed by Christos Nikou (“Apples”), in what is his English-language debut, “Fingernails” is about “Anna and Ryan (Buckley and White), who have found true love. It’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute, and meets Amir (Ahmed).”

The vague premise of the logline was given a bit of expansion thanks to Vanity Fair. Hours before Apple sent the “Fingernails” images and release information out to the press, the legacy outlet published an interview with Nikou and a few more images from the film.

“This film imagines an alternate reality in which a machine has been designed to accurately determine whether a couple is in love—by studying the makeup of a subject’s fingernail, which has been willingly pried off,” Vanity Fair awards staff writer David Canfield wrote. “Counselors at the institute where the machine was developed work with couples in advance of the test, running exercises meant to bring them closer together and prepare them for a defining moment in their relationship. The goal is to get a ‘match.’”

Canfield compared “Fingernails” to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which won an Oscar for original screenplay (and co-writer Charlie Kaufman) and scored star Kate Winslet a nomination for Best Actress. Lead actor Jim Carrey, meanwhile, was famously snubbed for his performance.

In an interview with Canfield, Nikou praised his leading men for their complementary traits. “Riz will give you different things in every take, and then you have so many choices in the editing,” Nikou explained. “Jeremy is the one-take actor. I mean, from the first take, you always have the best. You don’t need another one…. For me, he’s the new Ryan Gosling – that’s what I was telling him all the time.” 

In addition to its trio of talented leads, “Fingernails” also stars Luke Wilson and Emmy winner Annie Murphy. The cinematographer is “Euphoria” veteran Marcell Rev. Nikou co-wrote the film with Stavros Raptis and Sam Steiner. Nikou produced “Fingernails” alongside Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton, and Coco Francini for Dirty Films, and Lucas Wiesendanger for FilmNation Entertainment.

“Fingernails” will have its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, an honorific that means it will likely find itself among the titles to first screen at the Telluride Film Festival starting on August 31. (Telluride famously doesn’t announce its program until the day before the festival begins but premiere designations revealed by other fall fests often provide an educated window into the Telluride lineup.)

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