Parallel Trips

32.Day, a news classic by Mehmet Ali Birand, is with you this time with the documentary 50 Years of Cyprus!

32.Day, a news classic by Mehmet Ali Birand, is with you this time with the documentary 50 Years of Cyprus!

32.Day, a news classic by Mehmet Ali Birand, is with you this time with the documentary 50 Years of Cyprus!

Evaporating Borders is a poetically photographed and rendered film on tolerance and search for identity. Told through 5 vignettes portraying the lives of migrants on the island of Cyprus, it passionately weaves themes of displacement and belonging.

In 1970 the people of Karmi in Cyprus participate in an unprecedented experience: the shooting of the film "Beloved", with Hollywood cast and crew. This documentary functions as a kaleidoscope, transmitting images of that magical time and of the traumatic changes in their lives after the Turkish invasion. Four decades later, they revisit nostalgically those old beloved days.

Pictures of the Mediterranean made with bread, oil and wine. In one meal the history, geography, economy, climate, culture and people of the Mediterranean. Close up of threshing floors, threshing floors, mills. Dietary habits, production methods, daily routines together with the natural and built environment make up the cultural body of the most interesting, perhaps, man-made environment in history. A culture that runs as a commonplace even in seemingly different worlds. The Mediterranean emerges in a sea of convergence and meeting without, however, ignoring the dynamics of the different.

A short history of the island is followed by views of the countryside and people in town and village.

Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.

The Divided Island brings the ‘Cyprus problem’ back into focus, revealing untold stories and unravelling the intricate history that still reverberates today. After 50 years of failed negotiations, the issue remains on whether the Island will ever become re-united.

The film tells the story of eleven Turkish Cypriot workers who left their homes in a bus in 1964 that never came back. Their remains were found in a well in Cyprus in October 2006.

On the 50th anniversary of the Cyprus Peace Operation, TRT World revisits the island's turbulent history and asks: Is there still hope for reconciliation?