Koupepia

At his son’s engagement party, Petros, a widowed Cypriot man, finds himself desperate to show his support in celebration of the big occasion, but is still clearly struggling to fully come to terms with his son’s homosexuality. While attempting to navigate the new and strange environment he finds himself in, a meeting with a British Cypriot transgender woman named Eleni and their bonding over a love of food offers Petros a shift in perspective.

Directed by Yorgo Glynatsis and written by Sophia Vi (who marks themselves as a bonafide double-threat by also starring as Eleni, more on that later), Koupepia is a film that through its measured and concerted approach, manages to express quite the poignant tale of one man’s attempts to move forward and realise more modern times that are ever-conflicting with their own well-established set of ideas and philosophies.

Petros is a man yearning for a past where everything he knew was sure and certain, for a world and its times that doesn’t seem to be moving away from him faster than he can catch up with it. Between Glynatsis, Vi and of course all the cast but Polycarpou in particular, the entire film manages to wholly establish that underlying tension of discomfort that lies within Petros and how that affects his relationship with his son, his new partner and his trepidation in moving forward, while actually never needing to be pointedly explicit about it.

The film’s winning formula is equal parts writing; Vi's is a solid script full of veritable character moments where what isn’t said is as just as deliberate and important to the whole as what is, equal parts the way Glynatsis allows the film to simply hang on each of those moments of space to augment that awkwardness and allow it to sit there as long as it needs to, while the rest is brought home by Polycarpou and Vi, who’s centerpiece encounter allows a perspective from both sides while simultaneously opening up Petros’ world to the idea that taking that first step towards acceptance by simply being there for his son can sometimes mean the most, both actors giving this crucial point of the film the right amount of attention, grace and subtly it needs.

With aspirations for it to be developed into a multi-part series, Koupepia has the right team and intentions behind it to be an important piece of trans/queer cinema that could and should be given the chance to grow into something even bigger.