Waking Famagusta
A Documentary by Vasia Markides
The historic, Mediterranean city of Famagusta, Cyprus, carries a dark and peculiar secret. Its seaside suburb, once a bustling tourist resort and commercial center, is now a forbidden zone. This wasteland of abandoned hotels, churches, schools, homes and businesses has remained an open wound for its former residents who stand outside the barbed wire fence longing to return home. They have been waiting for a long time. The Varosha district of Famagusta has been held captive for almost half a century. A long stretch of golden sand beach and turquoise water juxtaposes the strip of crumbling highrises and armed Turkish troops who stand guard around Varosha’s perimeter.
The story begins when this post-apocalyptic landscape in paradise becomes a filmmaker’s lifelong obsession. Vasia Markides, a Greek Cypriot who grew up in Maine, heard countless stories of this lost paradise from her mother, who said goodbye to her Varosha home during the 1974 war that tore Cyprus in half. Born on the island’s divided capital, Vasia had never had contact with the Turkish Cypriots who lived in the north, until one day in 2003 when Turkey loosened restrictions at the checkpoints. Vasia was able to travel north for the first time, a day that would prove life-changing. Almost two decades later, after countless years spent filming her decaying ancestral city, she finds herself on an unexpected Odyssey to reunite divided Cypriots and turn this forbidden zone into a thriving ecocity, raising Famagusta from the ashes and inspiring the world.
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