About
The International Children’s Film Festival of Cyprus (ICFFCY) is a non-profit association in operation since May 2005. ICFFCY is aimed at giving children the opportunity to explore and use media in various forms, as well as view and discuss films from an early age to help build critical thinking skills, along with Media Education and Media Literacy (MIL) practices with a focus on quality cinema and its role in the lives of children and young people.
The festival began its journey in 2005 as the International Children's Film Festival of Cyprus (a registered non-profit organization also known as ICFFCY) with the aim to educate, focusing on quality cinema and its role in the lives of children and young people. Since then, the festival has provided a platform for Greek and Turkish Cypriot children and youth, as well as for the international community of Cyprus, to share emotions and work together in activities and projects around the world of cinema.
As the festival grew so did the needs of the Association. But the festival keeps its original promise, combining films and education in a program for young children, youth, teachers and parents, aiming to provide our audience with the opportunity to view and discuss a wide variety of films from all around the world. Since 2009, the festival aspires to strengthen its bi-communal Youth Team’s contribution to building a film festival "from scratch", under the guidance of coordinators and experts.
The association has since been renamed The International Children and Youth Film Festival (ICFFCY) and expanded into the field of running projects focusing on MIL, cinema workshops for children and youth and family screenings.
Our Story...
From 2004 to 2012 ICFFCY coordinated an International Film Festival aimed at school children aged 5 to 15 years old, collaborating with schools (both south and north) as well as the Ministry of Education the festival became a key annual event in the schooling calendar. Additionally, during the festival time were screenings for families and youth as well as a weekend movie marathon showcasing all films shown to children during the school visits. Each year from 2007 a school was selected to host a team of filmmakers who would work with a particular class of children in creating either their own film or stop motion animation.
Since 2012 ICFFCY has led and participated in various projects relating to Media Literacy and Media and Information Literacy, including; Cyprus Artefacts and Treasures Project (CAT); ECFOLI, an Erasmus+ 2 year Youth exchange and strategic partnership with youth from Palestine, Morocco, Portugal and France; Film making project with local and immigrated youth in collaboration with UNHCR; and in association with Cyprus Film Days in 2015, 2016 & 2017 for the children’s film screenings and workshops section of the festival.
Meet our founders
Berangere Blondeau
Evanthia Argyrou
Francoise Arnould
