‘Fingernails' trailer: Jessie Buckley, Jeremy Allen White explore love in sci-fi feature

Greek director Christos Nikou is making his Hollywood directorial debut with Apple TV+ feature Fingernails. The upcoming sci-fi psychological drama boasts a star-studded cast including Jeremy Allen White, Riz Ahmed, and Jessie Buckley.

Fingernails presents an alternate reality that unfolds in a not-so-distant, analog past. In this unique world, a state-of-the-art contraption holds the power to accurately determine whether a couple is truly in love.

This machine, more reminiscent of a vintage microwave than a cutting-edge piece of technology, generates its results by analyzing the composition of the subjects' fingernails, which have been meticulously collected by researchers at the Love Institute, a central location in the film's narrative.

Fingernails is Nikou’s attempt to portray “how difficult it is to fall in love, how love has changed…[and] how we experience love in a different way” in the times of cell phones and dating apps.

Influenced by the reassurances provided by the machine's inventor and the founder of the institute, portrayed by Luke Wilson, the couples undergoing the test display a willingness to embrace its scientific certainties. They are no less eager than those lovelorn individuals who place their hopes in the enigmatic algorithms that often seem to define the boundaries of love in our modern society.

Co-written by Nikou, Sam Steiner, and Stavros Raptis, and visually crafted by Marcell Rév, the cinematographer known for their work on "Euphoria," Fingernails masterfully treads a delicate line. It endeavors to depict an "alternate reality" that simultaneously maintains a sense of authenticity, as articulated by Nikou.

Debuting first at Telluride and later screening at the Toronto Film Festival, this star-studded feature is scheduled for release in theaters and on Apple TV+ on November 3rd.