Sirens - Film Screening & Discussion with Filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou

Join us for a screening of two short films by filmmaker Argyro Nicolau, Sirens (2025) and Screen Recording 2020-11-20 at 1.59.44 PM (2024), on October 27, 2026, followed by a discussion moderated by Professor Margaux Fitoussi (Comparative Literature and History).

About Argyro Nicolaou:

Argyro Nicolaou is a filmmaker and scholar whose works explore displacement and the politics of images in post-conflict societies like her native Cyprus. She is currently Visiting Faculty at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, Bard College.

About Sirens:

A man protects two women from the deadly sound of the sirens, but they insist on hearing them, even if it means risking their lives.

The film is a contemporary, feminist adaption of the namesake Homeric myth, inspired by the use of air raid sirens in Cyprus to commemorate the war that split the country in two in 1974. It explores how fear as a social construct is used to control and limit human desire.

About Screen Recording 2020-11-20 at 1.59.44 PM:

In 1974, following the Greek-backed coup d'etat and Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Varosha--the hometown of filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou's mother--become a forbidden military zone by the occupying Turkish army. Uninhabited and inaccessible for 46 years, the once-bustling seaside resort became an eerie ghost town. Then, one day in October 2020, it was suddenly opened to the public in a bizarre open-air museum. In this short film, the filmmaker and her mother reflect on returning to their ancestral home as tourists, 46 years after the family was forced to flee.