Hold Onto Me Cyprus Oscar entry — With Hold Onto Me, writer-director Myrsini Aristidou has delivered a first feature that has already carried Cyprus into unfamiliar territory: the country’s first international feature film submission to the Academy Awards. The film, a Cyprus-Denmark-Greece co-production, pairs a complete newcomer, Maria Petrova, with Christos Passalis, known for playing the son in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth.
Before the Oscar submission, the film premiered at Sundance, where it collected the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award. It is now screening in the Just Film youth and children’s section of the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, with Cercamon handling sales.
A Summer Reunion Between Strangers
The story unfolds during a Cyprus summer. Iris, 11, is spending her days with Danae, an older best friend, when news arrives that her grandfather has died. His funeral brings Aris, the father Iris has never met, to town. Aris is a petty criminal reluctant to take responsibility, yet Iris refuses to let the connection slip. She pushes into his schemes despite warnings from her mother and older brother, and what starts as stubborn persistence gradually gives way to a tentative bond. Trouble from Aris’ past then threatens whatever they have begun to build.
Aristidou has explored the father-daughter relationship before, in the shorts Semele (2015) and Aria, the latter centered on a teenage daughter. She describes the three works as a triptych and says the shorts left her wanting to go deeper into the subject.
A Love Story in Family Clothing
For Aristidou, the film’s central relationship follows the shape of a love story rather than a conventional family drama. Two people who do not know how to be together meet as strangers, draw closer, and eventually accept each other in their own manner. Placing that arc inside a father-daughter framework, she argues, generates a distinct energy because family carries expectations that strangers do not.
The director also wanted the narrative and the characters to keep shifting as the film progresses. She has said she was hard on herself during writing, focusing on moving the story forward in every scene.
Personal Roots Near the Sea
Aristidou’s own history runs through the material. Her parents divorced when she was very young, and she did not grow up with her father, who was a writer rather than a criminal but similarly absent. Their relationship began to develop when she was 12 or 13 and deepened around 15 or 16, reaching a point of mutual forgiveness and understanding.
The setting is equally personal. She grew up near the sea and wanted to shoot near it; her father kept a small boat during her childhood. Like Iris, she also spent time with older children, and she has said there is a great deal of truth in the film.
Casting a Pair Who Felt Like Family
Casting the leads took time. Shooting was set for July, and around April Aristidou settled on Passalis. She observed him with various children, mostly in Athens, before he traveled to Cyprus to meet the girl who would ultimately be chosen.
Watching Passalis and Petrova together convinced her. They seemed like family in an unusual way, sharing physical traits that made the resemblance believable, even though Petrova had no acting experience at all. Rehearsal plans fell apart: Passalis was working on another project and then contracted COVID-19, arriving only a day before the shoot. The pair read the script once, and filming began. Aristidou has said the lack of prior familiarity worked in the film’s favor, mirroring the strangers their characters play.
A National First, and What Comes Next
The Oscar submission carries weight for the director. She has described it as a big honor and spoken of suddenly feeling responsible for her entire country. She noted that no Cypriot film had appeared at Sundance before, and that the audience award there was followed by the Academy submission. She calls Cyprus an underdog in the race and says she is trying to enjoy the process while learning from it.
As for her next project, Aristidou does not expect to make another father-daughter film. What draws her is the broader pattern of strangers meeting and discovering how alike they are. She is developing a crime and spy thriller for television, is at work on several other projects, and is reading scripts sent by her U.S. agents, leaving open the possibility of directing material she did not write.
