Turkish Cypriot to star in The Road to Ithaca

By Andrew Adamides

A 20-YEAR-OLD Turkish Cypriot girl is set to star alongside Greek Cypriot and foreign actors in the film The Road to Ithaca, which starts shooting here next month.

London-based newcomer Berna Raif was cast in the lead role of Jasmine Orek just three days ago by Cypriot producer/director Costas Demetriou.

In the film, which is set before, during and after the Turkish invasion, teenager Jasmine falls in love with a Greek Cypriot boy, only to find the affair brutally cut short by the hostilities, which bring about events that change Jasmine and her friends’ lives for ever in ways of which they could never have dreamed.

Told partly in flashback, the plot also encompasses the parallel romance of Jasmine’s Greek -Cypriot friend Eleni (Frances Ruffelle) with a sophisticated older man who claims to be a Greek, but is actually a Turkish spy. The story is based on real events.

Among the international cast members are Ruffelle, who appeared in Mike Leigh’s 1996 hit Secrets and Lies, and former soap vixen Kate O’Mara.

The Road to Ithaca is Demetriou’s seventh film as producer/director. His earlier works include the award-winning, internationally-released Niko (1978), while his onscreen appearances include parts in the second James Bond film From Russia With Love in 1963, and The Magus (1966) alongside Anthony Quinn and Michael Caine.

Demetriou co-wrote the script for The Road to Ithaca with Jonathan Rumbold and local filmmaking duo Adonis Florides and Thoedoros Nicolaides.

Funding for the film, which is to be in English, comes from the European film foundation Eurimages, as well as private sources in Greece and Bulgaria. Shooting begins on October 19 and will take place on location all over the free areas of Cyprus, with additional scenes filmed in London.

The Road to Ithaca is provisionally scheduled for release in April next year.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.