“Together above the border” was born from the reality we live every day in Nicosia, which constantly stimulates our thoughts and reflections. We decided to participate to the EVS film Festival with our small creation and we didn’t expect the first prize, a double award in Paris, the video dissemination across the divided island and all the positive feedback we had.
Cyprus is our home during this EVS project and everything around us suggests that there is a story to tell: the divided city, the 2 borders, the passports controls, the 2 communities, the various spoken languages.
How do the young people from different communities can live without a mutual interaction? Who are the young people involved in the difficult peace-building process? How can our foreigner perspective help to speak out about the Cyprus problem? “Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot? We are just Cypriot” said one of the interviewed people.
We decided to condense in a 3 minutes video faces, feelings and young people’s voices.
We tried to involve different generations and different point of views. The most of the young people we met were interested in taking part in our video. Even when our final result seemed far, people involved were enthusiastic about our initiative and this was very rewarding.
When we heard about our award we were extremely happy because we put passion in our job but for sure we didn’t expect to win the 1st prize! The award was the participation in the two days event: « 20 ans de SVE : bilan et perspectives », held in Paris in September 2016. During these days we took part in a very interesting conference with another hundred of young European citizens, our video was projected and this gave us the occasion to talk about Cyprus’ situation, a topic that in the rest of Europe is almost unknown.
Later, “Together above the border” was projected in the buffer zone, in Nicosia, and next year we will be in Paris again promoting this short film. Another opportunity to show young people ready to change Cyprus, the beautiful, but still divided island.
