Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
Constantinos Farmakas, Maria Michael, Andreas C. Tselepos
Intro:
An intriguing 1980s Cypriot coming of age drama which benefits from its cogent sense of time and place.
This Cypriot film exposes dark themes that are not evident at first, as our attention is diverted to the mischievous 12-year-old boy, Socrates. The coming-of-age drama is set in the 1980s in a small mountain village. Though appearing to be rather innocent at first, the tight-knit village conceals dark secrets hidden below the surface.
Boy on the Bridge follows Socrates, whose summer of tormenting the locals is disrupted forever when he finds himself involved in a murder. Much like Stand by Me, as the story progresses, the plot thickens, exposing much darker family secrets. Growing up in the small village seemed frustrating at first, but Socrates’ life is about to change forever.
The foundation of Petros Charalambrous’ first feature film is drawn from Eve Makis’ 2008 book The Land of the Golden Apple, “Life had lost sweetness. Socrates felt as if he had eaten the accursed apple and was like Adam, suddenly prone to emotions he has never before experienced – fear, loneliness and shame”.
The period setting and detail provides a crucial sense of place. Recreating the atmosphere of the 1980s is aided by the village the film was shot in, which has maintained its integrity, almost as if it hasn’t aged in more than 30 years. Charalambrous captures the time period, not only through set design, but also dialogue (the use of subtitles) and location design. An integral element is the bridge, one of the primary locations of the film; as a coming of age film, the bridge represents the transition from boyhood to manhood.
