This week is also packed with cultural events, featuring festivals, ballet, movies, and theater performances. Let’s take a look at some recommendations for the week of September 20–26.
When I Saw the Sea
On the evening of Sunday, September 20, the world-renowned Lebanese choreographer comes to Nicosia for the first time with an international co-production that tells a harrowing story of survival. In 2024, female migrant domestic workers in Lebanon—already vulnerable due to the kafala system and in the midst of a devastating war— were abandoned by their employers and left to fend for themselves. Ali Chahrour turns his gaze to these women and, for the first time, brings three of them to the stage. Zena, Tenei, and Rania tell their own stories, as well as the stories of hundreds of other women who remain unseen.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Varosia, the City of Homer
On September 22, 2026, the award-winning documentary “Varosha, the Hostage City” (Varosha, la ville otage, 2024), directed by the distinguished French filmmaker Sylvie Deleule, will be screened at the Pantheon Cinema. The film, which won the Best Documentary Award at the international Ciné Paris Film Festival (September 2025), is a profound historical, geographical, and emotional exploration of Cyprus’s recent past and present through the most powerful symbol of the Cypriot drama: the walled city of Varosia.
Three nights, 15 films from 10 countries
The “Languages on Screen – Cinema Speaks Europe” festival returns September 22–24, featuring stories about language, identity, migration, climate anxiety, and everything that unites us. Three evenings, ten countries, and fifteen short films make up “Languages on Screen – Cinema Speaks Europe,” which takes place from September 22 to 24 in Nicosia, in celebration of the European Day of Languages.
Monologue at KTIRION 53
KTIRION 53 presents the Cypriot premiere of British playwright Alistair McDowell’s play “All of It,” directed by Maria Ioli Karolidou and performed by Antonia Charalambous. It is a stream-of-consciousness monologue—a deluge of thoughts and images emerging from the narrator’s mind in an uninterrupted flow. At times elliptical, at times fragmentary, associative, and repetitive, the thought—or memory—that transforms into speech captures with humor, embarrassment, honesty, candor, and tenderness the journey of an anonymous woman from birth to the moment of final parting.
Performances run from September 23 through October 21.
Coexistence
The artistic journeys of A. Tassos and Hambis converge in the print exhibition “Coexistence: A. Tassos – Hambis,” which opens on Wednesday, September 23, at 7:00 p.m., at the Hambis Municipal Museum of Printmaking in Nicosia.
“Coexistence: A. Tassos – Hambis” will remain open through July 24, 2027.
Phaedon or Vertigo
Marguerite Yourcenar’s play “Phaedon or Vertigo,” directed by Andreas Araouzou, is being presented as part of the Nicosia International Festival.
Performances on Wednesday, September 23, and Thursday, September 24, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. in the Outdoor Plaza of the Nicosia Municipal Theater. One of the leading literary figures of the twentieth century visits Plato’s Phaedo to recount the fall from innocence into knowledge.
Sardam
14th International Interdisciplinary Literature Festival SARDAM, September 23–27, 2026, in Limassol.
For yet another year, writers, writer-performers, and other artists from Cyprus and abroad will share ways of writing, reading, and performing literature through performances, workshops, and parallel events. The common thread is the combination of literature and the spoken word with contemporary and classical forms of expression, such as theater, technology, sound/music, spoken word, sound poetry, visual arts, and so on.
Grand Ballet
Don Quixote, a grand ballet in three acts for one night only, Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. at the Medieval Castle of Paphos. One of the most sun-drenched and spirited ballets in the global repertoire comes to Paphos as a complete production in three acts.
The leading roles are performed by Igor Tsvirko, principal dancer of the Bolshoi Theater, and Kristina Kretova, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater. On stage is the entire ensemble of the Slovenian National Ballet (Maribor Ballet), under the artistic direction of Edward Clug—one of Europe’s leading companies, with a history spanning more than a century. Fifty dancers, more than one hundred handmade costumes, and sets transported from Maribor in two shipping containers.
