Hungry for films? This March, April and May, STYX Film Encounters presents Is It Magic?, a series of five film screenings exploring moments when reality begins to loosen, and the world no longer seems fully stable or explainable. Across these films, magic is approached not only as the supernatural, but as a shift in perception: something that emerges through fear, desire, fantasy, myth, performance or the force of an image.

Rather than treating magic as a fixed genre category, this programme brings together films in which enchantment takes very different forms. It can appear as occult menace, childhood wonder, romantic projection, spiritual passage or the logic of dreams. What connects these works is not a single definition of magic, but a shared interest in moments when ordinary reality is unsettled and another order of experience begins to press through it.

Across horror, animation, melodrama, comedy and poetic fantasy, these films follow characters who are transformed by forces they cannot fully control or account for. Some encounter magical worlds directly, while others project them, long for them or become trapped inside them. In each case, magic is not simply an escape from reality, but a way of revealing how unstable reality already is.

Running from March to May at Pantheon Theatre in Nicosia, Is It Magic? unfolds through landmark works by Dario Argento, Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini, Woody Allen and Jean Cocteau. Together, they show magic not as a simple matter of spells or miracles, but as a disturbance in how the world is seen, felt and understood.

Two screenings have already taken place and up next is Federico Fellini’s 1965 film Juliet of the Spirits, screened this Sunday at 5.30pm. Following an Easter break, Woody Allen’s 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo will be presented on April 26. The final film of the progamme is Orpheus by Jean Cocteau, a 1950s film, screened in Nicosia on May 3.

Is It Magic?

Film screenings by STYX Film Encounters featuring the works of Dario Argento, Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, and Jean Cocteau. April 5, 26 and May 3. Pantheon Cinema, Nicosia. 5.30pm. €5. With Greek and English Subtitles