Thanasis Papathanasiou was born in 1959 in Orestiada. He studied Political Sciences at Panteion University (but without graduating) and at the Lykourgos Stavrakos Film and Television School. Before taking up writing, he wanted to be a sportswriter.

Michalis Reppas and Thanasis Papathanasiou are a contemporary writing duo who have been involved in writing (as well as directing) plays, as well as television series, films, and musical theater performances.

They became widely known with the now famous television series Treis Harites (1989 - 1992) and Bis hexamartein (1993 - 1996).

Their plays "Dads with Rum" (1996), "Symbetheri from Tirana" (2008), "The Stork Brings the Babies" (2002), "Raus" (2010), "Men ready for everything" (2012 ) was one of the biggest commercial successes of modern Greek theater while their film "Safe Sex" (1999) broke the record for paid Greek cinema tickets with 1,500,000 tickets. The film currently holds the second place at the Greek box office, right after "Politiki kousina". The authors have been honored with the "Karolos Koun" theater prize (2002) in the category "Dramaturgy of a Greek Work" for their play "Evros across the street" while their also play "Attiki Odos" (2010) won the " Audience Theater Award" of the magazine "Athinoramas", in the category "Best New Greek Project". Their film, "Oxygeno", was honored in 2003 with the "FIPRESCI Award", at the 44th Thessaloniki Festival.