Discoveries from Cyprus World Cinema

Winner of Young NOVA Award 2017

Semyon, an immigrant from Odessa (Ukraine), has found himself on the streets of Jerusalem. Once, he came to Israel in search of a new life and a future for his daughter, but he lost everything: his home, his family, and her trust. Now, the only witness to his existence is a young cameraman making a documentary film. Against the backdrop of ancient monastery walls and a bustling city park, Semyon attempts the one thing he has feared most — to speak to his daughter again. But can a single phone call undo years of silence?

Little Human is the third part of my ‘Cyprus Collage Stories’ series. Stop motion collage mixes up with old and new film in order to tell the imaginary adventures of a very popular Cypriot weaving pattern called ‘little human’. This anthropomorphic design which looks like something between a knight and a spaceman begins a journey to find his real home out of the weaving fabric.

In a desperate attempt to survive, two deserters and a green beret try to reunite with their forces after the enemy unleashes its secret weapon.

In the north of Cyprus, when Kiler Supermarket removes the stools used by cashiers in its Lefkoşa stores, a new layer of oppression sparks a workers’ fight.

Arachne, the masterful weaver, spun tales of the gods’ misdeeds. But for weaving the truth, she was met with divine wrath, cruel and unrelenting.

In a boxing gym on the northern outskirts of London, dominated by boys, an eleven-year-old girl struggles to be seen. Her act of defiance becomes a touching portrait of pain, courage, and resilience.

A documentary exploring the symbolism and the significance of salt in the Japanese culture through the artist Motoi Yamamoto. Through his art and personal experiences of loss we explore the ephemerality of our existence. It's about death, salt and art.

Inspired by the Greek poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Constantine P. Cavafy

An inept figure takes on the impossible task of dealing with the memory of the 1974 Turkish army invasion in Cyprus and its aftermath.

A horror short film.

A thriller short film.

What are we making a portrait of when we make a portrait? What does the filmmaker wants his subject for? What does he use his subject as a way of talking about and what does he use his subject to avoid talking about? A diachronic portrait of the filmmakers' mother and an exploration of the home, composed with family archives and new footage. The film brings about the pleasures and misgivings of moving through a life, reflecting upon cultural specificity of the 70's in Cyprus Preliminary non-fictional in its approach, the film moves through biographical to lyrical. A marriage of images, language, and affects, with a sensibility for light and dark, gives rise to domesticity and the human content of objects in an interplay between filmmaker, mother and the elasticity of time.

Marios comes face to face with himself.

The achievement of independence, social inclusion and employment, fuel the sense of happiness and brighten the lives of a group of people with intellectual disability.

This handmade silent film is a sociopolitical satire of our everyday life in Cyprus. Part of the Cyprus Collage Trilogy.

Introspective films processing both found and archival personal materials became almost a subgenre of their own during the pandemic lock-down. The sensitive diary collage focuses on exploratory attempts to retrace the path to one’s own identity.

Eight people from the generation of the Cypriot Crisis, who were born after the war, recall memories of places where they never lived and talk about their personal experiences, hopes, fears and the life they dream of living.

Intensely moving and sweeping documentary about the division of Cyprus on July 20, 1974 by the illegal invasion of the Turkish military and the struggles that still exist in their turbulent world.

A vampire falls in love in the summertime.

Collaboration between artists Nurtane Karagil and Iliada Charalambous with the support of cinematographer, Aycan Garip.

A short horror film.

A documentary that uses archival footage was prepared by Cypriot journalist and researcher George Filis, who presents extensive archival material he obtained after painstaking research in many foreign countries. The video is a digitization of an analog transfer from a copy provided by Katia Filis.

This documentary includes archive footage and memories told by Cypriots from both sides of the island of Venus. It is first attempt to reconsider memories of the period before and after the 1960s in Cyprus, while looking from both ethnic angles and bringing artistic and academic critique together.

A boy who never existed struggling to escape his mind as he realises it's not completely his own.

Sunlight Vandalism presents two narratives woven together to reveal a diverse portrait of Cyprus and the intricacies of Mediterranean migration. This includes a conversation with a Kurdish mother named Ayşe, who requested asylum in Cyprus in 2007. Speaking in Turkish Cypriot with Xenofontos—who responds in a Greek Cypriot—Ayşe is depicted swiping through images of her new home in Ankara, Turkey, where she has since relocated. The second portion of the film follows Ayşe in her space of work, where she is a cleaner in a local school, and in her living room, where Xenofontos interviews her in front of her wall of images of Abdullah Öcalan—a once prominent yet controversial leftist political figure. Through these vistas, Sunlight Vandalism reflects on the labor of domesticity and the precarity of settling during politically motivated migration.

In February 2020, the crossing points that allow contact between Cyprus’ separated communities, closed for the first time, almost two decades after their opening. The reason given was the effective management of the covid-19 pandemic. The closure ruptured relationships and deeply affected people’s lives, which have been built across the divide. These are their stories.

Film from Danai Stylianou

Saturday, October 14, 1922. The merchant steamer Twefik El Bari arrives at the port of Larnaca from Alaya, a coastal city in Asia Minor, with its sole cargo of 509 distressed Asia Minor refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly. The ship is on an emergency rescue mission for the Greek population of Alaya. After the massacres and burning of Smyrna, the Greek inhabitants of Alaya and other cities were ordered by the Neo-Turks to leave their ancestral homes, leaving behind their houses, shops, property, churches, their lives, their past, their history.

A fragmented biography through the gaze of geography and memory. Following a group of girls’ journey from Limassol to Ayia Napa, this short film tracks the motions of an average night out, while simultaneously navigating the more obscure undercurrents of the landscapes and locations they inhabit.

A Cypriot boy's perception of life changes when he catches a big fish.

A troubled woman wrestles inside her own apartment with an entity that forbids her to move forward with her life.

A horror short film.

A horror short film.

After wars, many people do not see their neighbors ever again. In Cyprus, this has become associated with a local custom of leaving flowers at the door of neighbors and loved ones when they were unable to find them at home.

The film follows Yellow, who wakes up one night and starts their adventure to a new day's dawn.

A Video Performance Art Piece By Pantea Shayesteh.

When a young girl drowns in the world of drugs,she finds herself in an unexpected situation.