The AEI2020 Film Festival will take place at Environmental Information Center Athalassa National Forest Park from the 10th until the 13th of September 2020. In addition, the AEI2020 Film Festival will be the very first Cypriot Film Festival that will be hybrid. So through our virtual film festival platform, audience from every corner of the planet will be able to watch the films online. More details will be announced very soon.

Within three days it will host 18 movies, short and feature-length documentaries, and a number of parallel educational and recreational activities will also take place.
The national screening program will host new and older work by Cypriot directors, including the first official screening of the documentary AKAMAS: LAND OF MYTH, NATURE, TRADITION.

The international screening section will host remarkable ethnographical and archaeological documentaries from Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, England, France, Czech Republic, Portugal, Iran, Australia and Japan.

The student section of this year’s festival will be postponed to November, on a date to be announced later, due to the pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19) and the restrictive measures announced by the Cyprus Government, in order to limit its spread and to protect the citizens. The completion of the 3rd cycle of the documentary workshops, organized by the AEI Film Festival in collaboration with the UNESCO Associated Schools Network was compulsorily postponed.

As a result, the 24 student teams, that took part in the workshops, were given an extension to complete their documentaries until October, so that they would be ready for their screening, on the date to be announced. The student documentaries, this year, will be competing for the three awards, sponsored by the Cyprus Radio-Television Authority. The awards ceremony will take place on the last day of the student documentaries screening, when the fourth cycle of the workshops, that will take place in 2021, will be announced.

Regarding the parallel activities of this year’s festival, the following cultural activities will be conducted:

• An interactive Music-Theatrical Workshop with the musician Leoni Hatzithoma.
• An environmental workshop in coordination with the Department of Forests.
• A ceramics workshop with Suzana Petri, where children will be taught how to craft a figurine inspired by the Bronze Age, as well as a small pottery using the original techniques of the artists of the past.
• An archeological workshop with archaeologist Elisavet Stefani entitled “Let me introduce myself: archaeologist”, in order to acquaint students with the science of archeology.

Along with the screenings and educational programs, the festival will be enriched with the photography exhibition of our compatriot Mustafa Ongun.

The parallel activities, also, include three specialized workshops, given by cinema professionals from abroad, openly to the public with themes that revolve around the development and production of documentaries.

Finally, we will organize two entertainment and educational excursions, accompanied by tour guides. The first excursion, concerns a tour of geological sites and of the Troodos Geopark museum and the second, will take place in the archeological sites of Amathus and Palaipafos, located in Kouklia, where, amongst other monuments, very important sanctuaries and temples in honor of the goddess Aphrodite, will also be seen.