18th Cyprus International Film Festival gets underway next week

The 18th Cyprus International Film Festival (CYIFF) will be held on 1-5 November in Nicosia, and according to Petra Terzi, director, producer and artistic director of the festival, 109 short and feature films from 35 countries have been selected, out of which approximately 40 films will be screened.

Terzi also announced that the Festival’s opening day on 1 November will include a concert by the musicians of the film "The Last Violin" by Carla Tchakra, which will be screened on 4 November in a world premiere.

As she explained, the musical performance will be on the last violin of Greek Cypriot expatriate violin maker Harry Vatiliotis, who the feature-length documentary "The Last Violin" was made about by Carla Thackrah and Romano Crivici.

Terzi said that the curtain of the festival will fall with the "Golden Aphrodite" Awards ceremony, which will take place on 5 November during which the Cyprus Symphony Youth Orchestra’s Woodwind Ensemble will perform.

The jury for the "Golden Aphrodite" Awards includes Greek actor Yiannis Aivazis, Danish director Sofie Vibeke Muasya, actor and producer Valentin Nonyela, American director and producer Victoria Greene, the Indian producer Vivek Singhania, American producer George F. Roberson, director Alexis Javiera and journalist Bejay Browne.

Finally, Petra Terzi said that after the CYIFF wraps up, the online version of the festival will take place, probably at the end of November.

In his address, which was read by Leoni Orfanidou, President of the Cultural Committee of the Municipality of Nicosia, the Mayor of Nicosia, Constantinos Yiorkadjis, noted that the philosophy of the festival is totally in line with the cultural philosophy of the Municipality of Nicosia, which promotes a wide range of cultural and artistic forms of expression.

Nenad Bogdanovic, head of the "Creative Europe - Media & Culture" funding programme in Cyprus, said that on November 3rd the calls for proposals for the audio-visual sectors will be presented, which – as he said - is an important funding opportunity through the programme, whose budget amounts to 2.55 billion euros. He also noted that 58% of this amount goes to the audio-visual industries.

George Kountouris, on behalf of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, said that during the "Golden Aphrodite" Awards ceremony, which will take place on November 5th, the Cyprus Symphony Youth Orchestra’s Woodwind Ensemble will present the programme "Musical Dialogues", a blend of the musical ideas by Manos Hadjidakis and Nino Rota.

Check out the films that will be participating here