The Cinematheque

Cyprus

The idiosyncrasies of modern Cypriot society—the confused sense of cultural identity, the intractable political divisions—are winningly satirized in writer-director Simon Farmakas’s screwball comedy-drama, the veteran filmmaker’s first feature. Skevos (Athos Antoniou), the film’s protagonist, is a naïve, mild-mannered villager in hock to the local loan shark. When an unidentified flying object tracked by a foreign intelligence agency crashes into Skevos’s potato field, inside the UN-controlled buffer zone separating Cyprus’s southern and northern regions, our hero sees an opportunity to escape indebtedness. But digging up the mysterious sphere will set off a chain of unexpected events. Sunrise in Kimmeria was named Best Cypriot Film at this year’s 16th Cyprus Film Days in Nicosia.