What’s coming up at Cyprus Film Days

With the 22^nd edition of Cyprus Film Days just around the corner, its programme has begun taking shape. A varied and daring line-up of films grappling with major social and artistic concerns of our times makes up this year’s edition, which will welcome cinephiles from April 12.

The festival brings a film programme that creates a meaningful dialogue with audience members while elevating the viewing experience into an opportunity for social awareness and quality entertainment in a spirit of open-mindedness.

Five of the best-crafted, most talked-about films that struck a chord with international audiences will be screened out-of-competition in the Viewfinder section – A close up of Contemporary World Cinema. They are Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, about the last pub standing in a village in northeastern England; the Tokyo-made, Cannes-winning, Oscar-nominated Perfect Days; the new film by Wim Wenders, inspired by the beauty and dignity of the everyday; the eye-opening new film by renowned director Agnieszka Holland Green Border about the geopolitical aspects of the refugee crisis, winner of the Special Jury Prize in Venice; Afire, Christian Petzold’s elliptical, slow-burning tragicomedy that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale; and Do not Expect too Much from the End of the World, a shrewd black comedy by iconoclast Radu Jude.

A diverse line-up of films that resonates with the cinematic tendencies of our times makes up the Glocal Images International Competition Section. They include A Strange Path (Brazil), a deeply personal family drama by Guto Parente; Sofia Exarchou’s gloomily realistic film, Animal (Greece, Austria, Romania, Cyprus, Bulgaria); Dreaming & Dying (Singapore, Indonesia), Nelson Yeo’s experimental fantasy drama; Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah a Boy (Jordan, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) a fascinating drama of female emancipation; 78 Days (Serbia), Emilija Gasic’s dynamic debut set against the backdrop of the 1999 NATO bombings of Serbia, which premiered at Rotterdam, to be screened in the presence of the director; The urgent, politically engaged drama by Palestinian British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, The Teacher (UK, Palestine, Qatar); and Slow (Lithuania, Spain, Sweden), a romantic, Sundance-winning film by Marija Kavtaradze that challenges intimacy stereotypes.

Four films by acclaimed Cypriot directors are featured in the Cypriot Films Competition Section which promises to be a highlight. These are also competing in the Glocal Images International Competition Section and include Five Shilling Nylon, the last film by the late Christos Shopahas, set in 1940s Cyprus; the new film by acclaimed director Adonis Florides, Africa Star, a close-up of the lives of three Cypriot women from different generations; Detached House, Ioakim Mylonas’ debut feature, a satirical dark comedy based on the same-titled book by Dimitris Mitsotakis; and Kyros Papavassiliou’s Embryo Larva Butterfly, a lyrical, existential film that confounds our sense of time.

In addition, this year’s CFD edition also features Taste of Indie, an ode to independent, micro-budget filmmaking, with three films: Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens (1982) that touches upon issues of female identity and self-reinvention, the first independent American film to compete at Cannes Film Festival; Jay and Mark Duplass’s Baghead (2008), a comedy horror film that defined the American mumblecore genre; and Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias (2023 – France, Palestine, Belgium, Qatar), a documentary tracing the story of four generations of Palestinian women, scheduled as a special screening at Zena Palace in Nicosia.

This year’s screening programme is also enriched with The Jury Presents section featuring three films drawn from the work of the festival’s International Jury members. Lastly, the Children and Youth section showcases five compelling films: The Apple Day by Mahmoud Ghaffari, Adventures in the Land of Asha by Sophie Farkas Bolla, Big Dreams by Dan Pánek, in the director’s presence, Nezouh by Soudade Kaadan and Searching by Anneesh Chaganty.

Cyprus Film Days 2024

International film festival with screenings and parallel events. April 12-20. Rialto Theatre, Limassol and Zena Palace, Nicosia. www.cyprusfilmdays.com