\n\tNow, the film screens in the Just Film youth and children\u2019s event of the 30th edition<\/a> of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival<\/a> (P\u00d6FF<\/a>) in Estonia. Cercamon is handling sales.<\/p>\n \n\tLasse Ulvedal Tolb\u00f8ll was the cinematographer on the Cyprus-Denmark-Greece co-production. The editors were Jenna Mangulad and Aristidou. Aristidou and Monica Nicolaidou produced the film, with Thomas J. Mangan IV and Mark Hollinger as the executive producers and Anders N.U. Berg, Konstantina Stavrianou and Rena Vougioukalou as co-producers.<\/p>\n \n\tWatch a trailer for the film right here.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tAristidou talked to THR about her bittersweet first feature, pairing an unknown as the young girl at the heart of it with the man who played the son in Dogtooth, her desire to make Hold Onto Me feel different and that first-ever Cypriot Oscar submission.<\/p>\n \n\tThe father-daughter theme is one that the filmmaker has also explored in two shorts. \u201cI feel like this is like a triptych,\u201d Aristidou tells THR. \u201cMy first short film called Semele in 2015 is also a father and daughter story and was the first time that I began exploring this theme. Then I did my second short film, Aria, which has a father daughter dynamic again, but with an older daughter \u2013 she\u2019s a teenager. They were short, and I wanted to go deeper in this subject matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHold Onto Me allowed her to do so in feature form, but she wanted it to be surprising and different from other films about similar familial relationships. \u201cI wanted to use the archetypical relationship of father and daughter within a love story,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a love story. It\u2019s about two people who don\u2019t know how to be together. They are sort of strangers in the beginning. They meet, then slowly come together, and they end up accepting each other or even loving each other in their own way. And when you set this up within the framework of a father, daughter and their family, it creates a different energy.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat is driven by societal expectations we have for family members. \u201cWhen someone is your family, you are expected to love them, or you have more expectations than from just any stranger,\u201d Aristidou highlights. \u201cHowever, they are strangers. They have never really met or had any shared experiences. So this is the first time they are reconnecting, and I wanted to explore this.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe characters and story of Hold Onto Me keep developing as the movie unfolds, and that is by design. \u201cOn a first feature, it\u2019s very easy to get very obsessed with what you want to do, so I was very tough on myself,\u201d Aristidou tells THR. \u201cWhen it comes to narrative structure and characters, I like to move the story forward in every scene. When I was writing, I was really thinking about that.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Hold Onto Me\u2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of P\u00d6FF<\/p>\n \n\tOne key reason that the filmmaker has returned to father-daughter stories lies in her own life experience. \u201cIt\u2019s very personal in many ways,\u201d she shares. \u201cMy parents divorced when I was very young, and I was not really growing up with my dad. He wasn\u2019t entirely gone like this character, but he was not that present. And he\u2019s not a criminal but a writer. It was only when I turned 12 or 13 that we started having more of a relationship. And when I was 15, 16, we really bonded. We reached a point where we started talking about everything and we really forgave each other. We reconnected, and there was really an understanding and acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n The film\u2019s setting is also personal. Hold Onto Me was shot in Cyprus, and for the writer-director, it was particularly important to film near the sea. \u201cI grew up near the sea, so there are references that are very personal,\u201d Aristidou tells THR. \u201cMy dad used to have a small boat when I was a kid. I also always used to hang out with older kids because I had an older friend who was my best friend. There is a lot of truth in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe chemistry between Iris and Aris in the film is palpable To ensure the right fit, casting took a lot of time. \u201cWe were shooting in July. Around April, I decided I was going to work with Christos,\u201d the director recalls. She wanted to see him interact with different kids, most of them in Athens. The actor then went to Cyprus to meet the girl who ended up making the cut. \u201cI saw Christos with Maria, and they felt family in a strange way,\u201d Aristidou tells THR. \u201cThey phsically have things in common and look a bit like family. But Maria had zero experience. She had never done anything [in acting]. But I felt that there was something with them.\u201d <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Hold Onto Me\u2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of P\u00d6FF<\/p>\n \n\tWith the big casting decisions made, she was hoping to rehearse with the two leads, but that didn\u2019t work out. \u201cChristos was shooting something. And then, he got COVID, so he only arrived a day before the shoot,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe only read the script once, and then I just started shooting with both of them. So I just threw Maria into the wild with him. But I think it worked out perfectly because they didn\u2019t know each other really \u2013 just like their characters.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Oscar submission was, of course, special for the writer-director feel, especially since it\u2019s the first for Cyprus. \u201cIt\u2019s a big honor,\u201d Aristidou shares. \u201cI suddenly felt very responsible for my whole country. But in many ways, this film and I are carving this path for Cyprus. There was no film from Cyprus in Sundance before, and then we won an audience award. And then the Oscars<\/a>. I guess it\u2019s a new thing for everyone here and for me. So I\u2019m learning a lot in the process. I know we\u2019re a bit of the underdogs, but I\u2019m trying to enjoy the ride.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSo, what\u2019s next for the filmmaker? \u201cI really love this dynamic of strangers coming together and realizing how similar they are or bonding,\u201d Aristidou says. \u201cI don\u2019t think I would do a father-daughter film again. But there\u2019s something about this narrative arc that I really love. Actually, I\u2019m trying to work on a TV show, which is a crime, spy thriller. But, let\u2019s see. I\u2019m working on a couple of things, and I\u2019m reading a lot of scripts because my agents in the U.S. are sending a lot of scripts to read. So I\u2019m also open to directing something I haven\u2019t written.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s summertime in Cyprus. Iris, 11, spends her days with her older best friend, Danae. But then she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":955669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[180825,64,63,134,3389,344,1433,447817],"class_list":["post-955668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies","tag-oscars","tag-oscars-2027"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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