Movie night: Akamas

(Scroll down for english)
Ακάμας
2006
Κυπριακή ταινία
Σκηνοθέτης: Πανίκος Χρυσάνθου
Ηθοποιοί: Κρίστοφερ Γκρέκο, Αγνή Τσαγκαρίδου, Μιχάλης Ττερλικκάς
Διάρκεια: 1 ώρα και 24 λεπτά

Πλοκή
Κύπρος, 1950. Ένας Τουρκοκύπριος, παραπαίδι σε έναν Ελληνοκύπριο βοσκό, ερωτεύεται την κόρη του. Οι δυο τους θα σμίξουν τελικά ύστερα από χρόνια πηγαίνοντας κόντρα στις έντονες αντιρρήσεις της τοπικής κοινωνίας με φόντο τις κρίσιμες εξελίξεις στις τουρκοκυπριακές σχέσεις τη δεκαετία του ’60 και του ’70.

Akamas
(2006)
Director: Panikos Chrissanthou
Writer: Panikos Chrissanthou
Stars: Christopher Greco, Agni Scott, Michalis Terlikkas
Genre: Drama
Language: Greek (Cyprus Dialect) few Turkish & English
Subtitles: English, Turkish, Greek (For Greece), Greek (For Cyprus)
Runtime: 115 minutes

Free admission to public.

They fell in love at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Therefore they should pay a price.
• Omeris, a Turkish Cypriot boy, grows up with Greek-Cypriots in the innocent years of his homeland. He has been taught that human beings have no differences between them, whether they call themselves Greek or Turk, Muslim or Christian. When he falls in love with a Greek-Cypriot girl, he realizes that the world is not as he imagined it to be. The game of love has many surprises in store for him. Destiny ordains that he fight so that he can stay with his beloved, at a moment when the people around him are moving in exactly the opposite direction, towards separation and partition. If he doesn’t want to be defeated he must fight the absurdity of fanaticism that is invading his personal life and is trying to crush it.
– Thesaloniki, Film Festival.

Akamas is a romance, a beautiful one at that, but it also helps to explain how people get swept into conflict not just through greed, fear and poverty but also loyalty: loyalty to religion, to family, to identity and in this instance, to love. How they are forced to take sides, to retreat to tribalism, to make their neighbor their enemy. (Lauren 0’Hara, Cyprus Mail 31.3.2007)