Cyprus Film Days 2010 (Nicosia)

Cyprus Film Days is the most celebrated annual international Film Festival that takes place in Cyprus. It is organized by the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the RIALTO theatre. The 8th edition of the festival will take place from the 10th until the 18th of April in Limassol at the RIALTO Theatre and in Nicosia at the Pantheon Art Cinema. Continuing the tradition of previous years, the festival will host some of the best and most important films of the year that have been critically acclaimed internationally.

For the second consecutive year the artistic Committee consisted of Adonis Florides (Director/Writer), Konstantinos Sarkas (Journalist) and Dr Costas Constandinides (academic) is responsible for the selection of the films and the programme.

The main objective of the festival is the screening and promotion of independent cinema that deals with contemporary social and political issues across the globe. At the same time, “Cyprus Film Days” seeks to bring together filmmakers from Cyprus and abroad in order to exchange ideas and discuss recent developments and trends in world cinema. This year's program is a selective combination of films that have been distinguished and received awards at international festivals, groundbreaking films as well as low budget productions which are cinematic discoveries in terms of their artistic and narrative approach. All 23 films that have been chosen this year for Cyprus Film Days undoubtedly stand out as authentic samples of a kind of cinema that is characterized and guided by the qualities and point of view of their creator.

Opening Party at Tritos, Pantheon on Saturday April 10 at 22:00.

Entrance:

€5 day pass
€20 general pass

Entrance is free for all afternoon screenings and for the "Scary Sunday" section of the festival.

The Films:

Fish Tank
Saturday 10 April at 20.00

Fish Tank is the story of Mia, a volatile 15-year-old, who is always in trouble and who has become excluded from school and ostracized by her friends. One hot summer day her mother brings home a mysterious stranger called Connor who promises to change everything and bring love into all their lives. In the film Academy Award Winning Director Andrea Arnold proves remarkably facile at capturing society's ills in dramatic form, particularly the treacherous terrain that fatherless teenage girls face.

Cast:
Katie Jarvis (Mia)
Michael Fassbender (Connor)
Kierston Wareing (Joanne)
Charlotte Collins (Sophie)

Director: Andrea Arnold
Writer: Andrea Arnold
Runtime: 123 min
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: United Kingdom

REC
Sunday 11 April at 16.00

REC is a 2007 Spanish horror film co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The film turns on a young TV reporter and her cameraman who cover the night shift at the local fire station. Receiving a call from an old lady trapped in her house, they reach her building to hear horrifying screams -- which begin a long nightmare and a uniquely dramatic TV report. REC has refined visceral horror and is regarded as one of the best horror films to date.

Cast:
Manuela Velasco (Ángela Vidal)
Ferran Terraza (Manu)
Pablo Rosso (Pablo)
Carlos Vicente (Guillem Marimon)

Director: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Writer: Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo
Runtime: 78 min
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2007
Country: Spain

REC 2
Sunday 11 April at 18.00

REC 2 is the sequel to 2007's REC. Written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, both of whom returned from the previous film, the story takes place immediately after the events of the first film, with producing company Filmax International describing it as having "the same claustrophobic concept" as REC but with "new means of transferring fear from the screen to the spectator through the recording lens." The film is undoubtedly one of the most successful horror sequels in cinematic history and it's certainly impossible not to expect great things for the inevitable third installment.

Cast:
Manuela Velasco (Ángela Vidal)
Ferran Terraza (Manu)
Pablo Rosso (Pablo)
Javier Botet (Niña Medeiros)

Director: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Writer: Jaume Balagueró, Manu Díez
Runtime: 85 min
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Spain

Medal of Honor
Sunday 11 April at 20.00

Told with precision, irony and extraordinary performances, this immensely touching film encapsulating Romania's shift from Communism to Capitalism, centers on a 75-year-old man awarded a Medal of Honor for unspecified "heroic" actions during World War II. But after a while his luck unexpectedly changes, when he receives a letter from the Ministry of Defense saying that the awarding of the medal was an error and that he should return it. He now desperately tries to find evidence of his inexistent heroic actions...

Cast:
Mimi Branescu (Cornel)
Victor Rebengiuc (Ion)
Camelia Zorlescu (Nina)

Director: Calin Peter Netzer
Writer: Tudor Voican
Runtime: 105 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Romanian
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Romania, Germany

Plan B
Sunday 11 April at 22.00

Marco Berger's debut feature sees conniving Bruno dumped by his girlfriend and deciding to win her back by any possible means. She's not interested, however, as there's a new man in her life, the charming, good-looking Pablo. When Bruno realizes that she's not going to give Pablo up, he devises an alternative plan to win her back. Plan B is an appealing modern-day love story set among the roof terraces, gyms and apartments of contemporary Buenos Aires.

Cast:
Manuel Vignau (Bruno)
Lucas Ferraro (Pablo)
Mercedes Quinteros (Laura)
Damián Canduci

Director: Marco Berger
Writer: Marco Berger
Runtime: 103 min
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Argentina

La Pivellina
Monday 12 April at 20.00

Abandoned in a park, the two-year-old girl Asia is found by Patti, a circus woman living with her husband Walter in a trailer park in San Basilio on the outskirts of Rome. With the help of a teenager boy, Patti starts to search for the girl's mother and gives the girl a new home for an uncertain period of time. La Pivellina is a moving tale of courage and discrimination, of loss and togetherness, a look behind the corrugated-iron fence of a gated community.

Cast:
Tairo Caroli (Tairo)
Asia Crippa (Asia)
Patrizia Gerardi (Patty)
Walter Saabel (Walter)

Director: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
Writer: Tizza Covi
Runtime: 100 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Austria, Italy

Eastern Plays
Monday 12 April at 22.00

Two brothers who have lost all contact are suddenly brought together when they have opposite roles in a racist beating: while Georgi, who’s recently joined a neo-Nazi group, participates in the violence, Itso witnesses the incident and rescues a Turkish family that was attacked. Only by reuniting will the two brothers be able to assess what they really want from life. Eastern Plays is an honest, skillful rumination on the search for inner and outer connections.

Cast:
Christo Christov (Itso)
Ovanes Torosian (Georgi)
Saadet Aksoy (Isil)
Nikolina Iancheva (Niki)

Director: Kamen Kalev
Writer: Kamen Kalev
Runtime: 89 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Bulgarian, Turkish, English
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Bulgaria, Sweden

Dogtooth
Tuesday 13 April at 20.00

This unpredictable and provocative film from Greece focuses on a family of five: mother, father, and three kids. They all live in a house at the outskirts of a city which is surrounded by a tall fence. The kids have never been outside that fence. They are being educated, entertained, bored and exercised in the manner that their parents deem appropriate, without any contact from the outside world. The film introduces us to a patently surreal situation, and it's darkly amusing to see what happens when flat normalcy infects outrageous absurdity.

Cast:
Christos Stergioglou (Father)
Michelle Valley (Mother)
Aggeliki Papoulia (Older Daughter)
Mary Tsoni (Younger Daughter)

Director: Giorgos Lanthimos
Writer: Efthymis Filippou, Giorgos Lanthimos
Runtime: 96 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Greek
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Greece

London River
Tuesday 13 April at 22.00

After his commanding, polemical reinvention of the World War II epic in the Oscar nominated Days of Glory, Director Rachid Bouchareb takes up a smaller canvas with this spare, timely drama, set against the background of the July 2005 London bomb attacks. London River focuses on two different parents who arrive in London to search for their missing children after the bombings. As both characters arrive in the North London area, and make inquiries in different directions, it can't be long before they meet in a city where the everyday collisions of cultures produce not only conflict but possibility.

Cast:
Brenda Blethyn (Elisabeth)
Sotigui Kouyaté (Ousmane)
Sami Bouajila (Imam)
Marc Baylis (Edward)

Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Writer: Rachid Bouchareb, Zoé Galeron
Runtime: 87 min
Genre: Drama
Language: English, French, Arabic
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: United Kingdom, France

Waiting for Happiness
Wednesday 14 April at 18.00

Considered the most important African filmmaker to have emerged in the past decade, in Waiting for Happiness Sissako beautifully observes the mosaic of life in a small seaside village on the West Coast of Africa where the inhabitants have created their own kind of modern world. A poetic reflection on themes of exile, travel, home and displacement.

Cast:
Khatra Ould Abder Kader (Khatra)
Maata Ould Mohamed Abeid (Maata)
Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed (Abdallah)
Nana Diakité (Nana)

Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Writer: Abderrahmane Sissako
Runtime: 96 min
Genre: Drama, Music
Language: French
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2002
Country: Mauritania, France

Hadewijch
Wednesday 14 April at 20.00

Acclaimed director Bruno Dumont returns with Hadewijch, his most provocative film yet. Named after a thirteenth-century mystic, the film follows the path of Céline, a young novice nun who finds her intense mystical inclinations out of keeping with the realities of convent life. Dumont has a way of dividing audiences like few other directors, but in Hadewijch he gives us a remarkable, audacious film.

Cast:
Julie Sokolowski (Céline / Hadewijch)
Yassine Salime (Yassine)
David Dewaele (David)
Karl Sarafidis (Nassir)

Director: Bruno Dumont
Writer: Bruno Dumont
Runtime: 100 min
Genre: Drama
Language: French
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: France

Metastazes
Wednesday 14 April at 22.00

Set in Zagreb’s underworld, Metastazes depicts the lives of a young generation who grew up during the Croatian Homeland War, and the subsequent postwar years. It explores their struggle to adapt to the new rules of merciless capitalism. The story follows four drug addicts, and begins when one of them returns home after three years at a rehabilitation center. The film's aim is to portray from the inside the violent and rightwing extremist groups who have taken root in modern Croatia.

Cast:
Rene Bitorajac (Krpa)
Franjo Dijak (Filip)
Rakan Rushaidat (Dejo)
Robert Ugrina (Kizo)

Director: Branko Schmidt
Writer: Ivo Balenovic, Ognjen Svilicic
Runtime: 84 min
Genre: Crime, Drama
Language: Croatian
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia

La Tigra, Chaco
Thursday 15 April at 20.00

Esteban returns to his father's hometown - La Tigra, Chaco - where he spent his childhood summers. His father still lives there with his new family but is out on a job, driving his truck, so Esteban spends a few days with his aunt while waiting for him. This gives him the chance to get reacquainted with his old friend Vero - nowadays a very attractive but, unfortunately, engaged young woman. Each step they take together seems to take them back to the most precious moments of a shared memory.

Cast:
Ezequiel Tronconi (Esteban)
Guadalupe Docampo (Vero)
Ana Allende

Director: Federico Godfrid, Juan Sasiaín
Writer: Federico Godfrid, Juan Sasiaín
Runtime: 75 min
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2008
Country: Argentina

Tehroun
Thursday 15 April at 22.00

Ibrahim has left his village and family to try his luck in Tehran. However, in this urban jungle where everything can be bought and sold, dreams rapidly turn into nightmares. Nader T. Homayoun’s debut film, Tehroun is one of the more intriguing and fascinating films to emerge from the current Iranian crop which could also be the country’s first crime thriller.

Cast:
Ali Ebdali
Sara Bahrami

Director: Nader T. Homayoun
Writer: Jean-Philippe Gaud, Nader T. Homayoun
Runtime: 95 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Persian
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Iran, France

Life on Earth
Friday 16 April at 18.00

In this poetic docu-drama, director Sissako plays a character very close to himself who returns to the poor village in Mali where he was raised to visit his father (played by the filmmaker's real-life father). As news of the New Year's celebrations in Paris are heard over the radio, this small, struggling community is barely affected at all as a new millennium dawns.

Cast:
Abderrahmane Sissako
Nana Baby
Mohamed Sissako
Bourama Coulibaly

Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Writer: Abderrahmane Sissako
Runtime: 61 min
Genre: Drama
Language: French
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 1998
Country: Mali, Mauritania, France

Lebanon
Friday 16 April at 20.00

First-time director Samuel Maoz creates an unforgettable portrayal of the horrors of war with this autobiographical account of Israel's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. A lone tank is dispatched to search a hostile town that has already been bombarded by the Israel Air Force. What seems to be a simple mission gets gradually out of control and turns into a death trap, a shivering nightmare.

Cast:
Itay Tiran (Asi)
Oshri Cohen (Herzel)
Yoav Donat (Shmulik)
Michael Moshonov (Yigal)

Director: Samuel Maoz
Writer: Samuel Maoz
Runtime: 92 min
Genre: Drama, War
Language: Hebrew, Arabic, French, English
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Israel, France, Germany

About Elly
Friday 16 April at 22.00

About Elly is a supremely sophisticated Iranian drama about a group of friends while they're at a getaway on the banks of the Caspian Sea. The trip is planned by Sepideh, who has brought along Elly, her daughter's kindergarten teacher, in order to introduce her to Ahmad, a friend who has come back from Germany. But everything changes when the young Elly disappears. The film establishes writer - director Asghar Farhadi as one of Iranian cinema's prominent and distinctive voices, as he brings us ever closer to the nexus of his characters' web of deceit.

Cast:
Golshifteh Farahani (Sepideh)
Shahab Hosseini (Ahmad)
Taraneh Alidoosti (Elly)
Marila Zare'i (Shohreh)

Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writer: Asghar Farhadi
Runtime: 119 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Persian, German
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: Iran

Bamako
Saturday 17 April at 18.00

Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up. In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes… Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the court yard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.

Cast:
Aïssa Maïga (Melé)
Tiécoura Traoré (Chaka)
Balla Habib Dembélé (Falaï)
Maimouna Hélène Diarra (Saramba)

Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Writer: Abderrahmane Sissako
Runtime: 115 min
Genre: Drama
Language: French
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2006
Country: Mali, USA, France

Ajami
Saturday 17 April at 20.00

Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood is a melting pot of cultures and conflicting views among Jews, Muslims and Christians. Back and forth in time, and through the eyes of various characters, in Ajami we witness how impossible the situation actually is. The tragic fragility of human existence is experienced in the enclosed community of Ajami, where enemies must live as neighbors. No location better expresses the dramatic collision of different worlds.

Cast:
Fouad Habash (Nasri)
Nisrine Rihan (Ilham)
Elias Saba (Shata)
Youssef Sahwani (Abu-Lias)

Director: Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani
Writer: Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani
Runtime: 120 min
Genre: Drama
Language: Arabic, Hebrew
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2007
Country: Israel, Germany

Thirst
Sunday 18 April at 18.00

Thirst is the latest film by Korean acclaimed director Chan Wook Park. This horror/drama film tells the story of a priest, who is in love with his friend’s wife, turning into a vampire through a failed medical experiment. Park has stated, "This film was originally called "The Bat" to convey a sense of horror. After all, it is about vampires. But it is also more than that. It is about passion and a love triangle. I feel that it is unique because it is not just a thriller, and not merely a horror film, but an illicit love story as well." The film won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Cast:
Kang-ho Song (Priest Sang-hyeon)
Ok-bin Kim (Tae-ju)
Hae-sook Kim (Lady Ra)
Ha-kyun Shin (Kang-woo)

Director: Chan-wook Park
Writer: Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan-wook Park
Runtime: 113 min
Genre: Drama, Horror, Romance
Language: Korean
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 2009
Country: South Korea, USA

Suspiria
Sunday 18 April at 20.00

Suspiria is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento, and co-written by Argento and actress Daria Nicolodi. A candy-colored nightmare from Italian terror maestro, the film weaves a menacing tale of witchcraft as a fairy tale gone horribly wrong. Entertainment Weekly rated the film #18 of its top 25 scariest movies of all time, saying it had "the most vicious murder scene ever filmed".

Cast:
Jessica Harper (Suzy Bannion)
Stefania Casini (Sara)
Barbara Magnolfi (Olga)
Udo Kier (Dr. Frank Mandel)

Director: Dario Argento
Writer: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi
Runtime: 98 min
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English/Greek
Production Year: 1977
Country: Italy

* The film will be followed by the documentary "Fear At 400 Degrees"