The Cyprus Film Days International Festival on Thursday announced the lineup of its movies for its 2025 edition.
According to the organisers, “the festival’s 23rd edition has gathered films that foster dialogue and turn screenings into opportunities for exploring the most urgent social and artistic themes of our time.”
Five of the most highly anticipated films in recent months, which impressed international audiences, will be screened out of competition in the Viewfinder section – A Close-Up of Contemporary World Cinema.
These are:
– Payal Kapadia’s lyrical All We Imagine as Light, a warm close-up of three women from Mumbai’s working class that tackle the challenges of their personal and professional life. The film was awarded the Grand Prix at the latest Cannes Festival.
– The political drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig, filmed in secret by self-exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof about a judge and his family uncovering the paranoia of Tehran’s regime. The film received the Special Jury Award at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film.
– The new film by Turkish filmmaker Aslı Özge, titled Faruk, centered around Özge’s 90-year-old father as it explores the consequences of gentrification and the complexity of father-daughter relationships in a hybrid form between fiction and documentary. The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale Panorama.
– Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story that garnered two awards in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. The film follows an asylum seeker from Guinea, working as a food deliveryman in Paris while preparing for a make-or-break interview.
– Luca Guadagnino’s sexually charged Queer, based on the homonymous book by William S. Burroughs. Set in Mexico City, the film follows an American man’s efforts to create a deep but impossible relationship.
The Glocal Images International Competition Section offers films that trace the complexity of the contemporary world by approaching social, political and personal stories.
This year’s film submissions reached a record high, coupled with a noted rise in the quality of films, the organisers said. This demonstrates “the festival’s ever-growing stature as a point of reference for international independent cinema in the region,” they added.
This year’s film lineup:
– Déa Kulumbegashvili’s gripping April (Georgia, Italy, France), set against the Georgian countryside. The film follows a female obstetrician investigated for negligence while secretly carrying out illegal abortions. It earned the Special Jury Prize in Venice.
– Saulė Bliuvaitė’ s Toxic (Lithuania) awarded the Pardo d’ Oro at Locarno, a portrayal of two teenage girls at a modelling school, ensnared by the promise of a better life into a cruel world of toxic beauty standards. – The thriller Ghost Trail (France, Germany, Belgium), Jonathan Millet’s directorial debut about a Syrian man pursuing his former torturer in France. The film competed for the Caméra d’Or at the most recent Cannes festival.
– Sun Never Again, the debut of emerging filmmaker David Jovanović (Serbia), a caustic commentary on environmental destruction in the Serbian countryside, exposing local scandals and wider global stakes.
– Stergios Paschos’s contemplative Lula Leblanc (Greece), starring Michelle Valley in a film where two stories unfold in parallel, overlapping through memory, love and loss.
– Khaled Mansour’s triumphant debut, Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo (Egypt, Saudi Arabia), a tender story of survival and devotion featuring a man and his dog against the backdrop of Cairo’s harsh working-class reality. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
– Killerwood, an atmospheric dark comedy by Christos Massalas (Greece), an alumnus of CFD. Fiction and reality are blurred during the shooting of a film about unresolved murders. The ensemble cast was presented with an honourable mention at Thessaloniki.
In the limelight of this year’s Cypriot Films Competition Section are three special films by established Cypriot filmmakers, each with a different artistic inclination. The films also compete in the Glocal Images International Competition Section.
The films are:
– The new film by award-winning filmmaker Aliki Danezi-Knutsen, Together Apart (Greece, Cyprus) where a separated couple is looking to take a step toward reconnection or breakup on an isolated island.
– The third feature film by Kyros Papavassiliou, the humoristic The Sock (Cyprus), about a director shooting a film on the consequences of an accident while recuperating at the house of his cousin, who is disabled.
– Emilios Avraam’s debut feature film Smaragda (Cyprus) about a middle-aged woman who embraces social media as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and comes face-to-face with life’s uncertainties.
Special screenings include a tribute to the American director David Lynch, including some of the most well known samples of his dark and subversive cinematic vision, which continue to inspire and intrigue audiences to this day: the groundbreaking films The Lost Highway, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.
Lastly, between 4 and 13 April, the Festival’s Section for Children and Youth brings young spectators a lineup of films that focus on equality, solidarity and overcoming prejudice: Winners by Soleen Yusef (Germany), Lars is Lol by Eirik Sæter Stordahl (Norway), Through Rocks and Clouds by Franco García Becerra (Peru, Chile) and the animated films Living Large by Kristina Dufková (Czech Republic, Slovakia, France) and Mirai by Mamoru Hosoda (Japan). Mirai will be screened dubbed into Greek.
The full programme will soon be available on cyprusfilmdays.com and on the festival’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Information:
- €5 per screening | €30 festival pass (for all screenings).
- Free for students upon display of student card.
- Free for children (Children and Youth Section).
- Free for holders of Disability Card.
- All films aside the Children and Youth Section are suitable for 18+.
- All films will be screened in their original language with Greek and English subtitles. Films of the Cypriot Films Competition Section will also be screened with Turkish subtitles.
