The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival: “Where Are They”: Missing After the 1974 Turkish Invasion of Cyprus

The 27^th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival wrapped up today 16March2025.

“Where Are They” is a Greek documentary revealing the ongoing attempts to locate 1,619 Greek Cypriots “missing” immediately after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The missing are soldiers never registered as Prisoners of War or were civilians. Most of the missing are men but 116 women and 32 children are included. Occasionally remains are recovered but as relatives of the missing make abundantly clear time is running out and memories fade. One relative who lost his mother, father and young brother laments the failure to locate remains and the forgetting of the missing is an insult to history. Maria Kalmpourtzi the President of the Panhellenic Committee of Parents and Relatives of Unregistered Prisoners of War and Missing Persons in Cyprus terms “missing persons” as an insult to humanity and is critical of the Greek Government for not being more aggressive in pursuing the cause.

The Turks displayed unbridled barbarity in torturing, raping and executing Greek Cypriots. As with Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children Turks kidnapped young children for adoption. One Greek Cypriot whose baby was shot in the leg by a Turkish soldier and told he would be taken to a hospital for surgery and then returned to her never returned being adopted by a doctor at the hospital and taken to Ankara where he now works as a physician.

There are sources in the American intelligence community working with the Israeli Mossad who claim some of the missing soldiers were used in medical experiments in Turkey or kidnapped to work on “heroin plantations” for Turkish drug kingpins.

The documentary is a reminder casualties of war are not only soldiers but civilians. And the casualties are not only the dead and the wounded but families of the missing. The question is are they really missing or is it the lack of will and effort causing them to be missing.

Unfortunately the documentary does not give any background about the history of Cyprus and the events leading to the 1974 Turkish invasion presupposing the audience is exclusively Greek or has knowledge of the 1974 invasion. If you know nothing about Cyprus it would be hard to put the documentary into a proper context which is a great shame.

Directed by Nikos Aslanidis.

RKS 2025 Documentary Film Rating 58/100.