Cyprus Sends Its First-Ever Film Into the Oscar Race

Cyprus has submitted a film to the Academy Awards for the first time in its history. The film is "Hold Onto Me," Myrsini Aristidou's debut feature, which won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance in January 2026 and will now represent the island nation in the international feature race — a category formerly known as foreign-language film.

The 36-year-old director is under no illusions about the scale of the task. "I have no idea of what our chances are, to be honest. I've never done this before," she told Variety in Thessaloniki. "Cyprus is a very small country. I really feel like we're underdogs. We don't have a lot of money to do the campaign. We're just doing the best we can."

She is now packing her bags for the U.S., where the campaign begins after two sold-out screenings at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, running Nov. 5–15, where the film plays in the Meet the Neighbors+ competition.

What is the film about?

"Hold Onto Me" follows Iris, a free-spirited 11-year-old played by newcomer Maria Petrova, whose summer is interrupted by the arrival of her estranged father Aris, played by Christos Passalis ("Dogtooth"). Aris, a reluctant dad back in town only for his own father's funeral, rebuffs his daughter's attempts to reconnect, but her persistence gradually thaws him — offering hope, if not a promise, of rebuilding a fractured relationship.

Variety's Carlos Aguilar praised the "heartfelt drama" in his Sundance review, noting that while the film "treads in familiar waters," Aristidou's "astute writing and assuredly bittersweet performance take the story into singular, surprising places." The film is produced by Filmblades and One Six One Films, co-produced by Fredo Pictures and Graal Films, with Cercamon handling world sales.

Why is it personal for the director?

The story draws on Aristidou's own life. Her parents divorced when she was a young girl, and her father returned when she was a teenager — ending up, she says, "more of a friend than a father figure." "The emotion is very personal — the emotion of reconnecting with someone that is supposed to be your father, but you don't really know him," she said.

The film also marked a homecoming after seven years in the U.S., where she studied at Pratt Institute and earned a master's degree at NYU. "It was a big decision to leave the U.S. and go back to my country and make a Greek-language film and shoot it where I grew up," she said, adding that she wanted to capture "the worn-out backdrops, the slow movement of time and the raw emotional undercurrents that continue to shape us."

How did the two leads build their chemistry?

Partly by accident. Passalis caught COVID just as principal photography was to begin, leaving no time for rehearsal. "We just read the script the day before the shoot, and then we started shooting," Aristidou said. Petrova "didn't really like" Passalis at first — and that, the director says, turned out to be a gift. "Their bond was being built while we were shooting, and it was also happening in the film. So there's a lot of truth in their reactions."

Petrova was discovered by casting director Daina Papadaki during a search for a non-professional lead. "She's a very mature kid. She's very deep. She's very stoic as a person," Aristidou said. When the director told the 11-year-old she was "going to carry this entire movie," Petrova didn't blink.

Aristidou frames the whole ride — the Sundance prize, the historic submission, the accidental chemistry — as a lesson in not forcing things. "I always end up close to where I imagined I would be. But it was through different paths," she said. "You can never really plan." Cyprus, a country with no Oscar-submission track record, now has a film in the race — and an underdog with a determined director behind it.