CY: Digging the Past in Search of the Future
Director Michael GEdes
Countries United Kingdom
Duration 36 min
Synopsis
The film follows three members of The Elders - Desmond Tutu, Lakhdar Brahimi and Jimmy Carter – as they join four young Cypriots to learn about a painful issue: the thousands of people who ‘disappeared’ during the violence and conflict that have kept CY a divided island for over three decades. Together they visit exhumation sites where scientists from the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) dig deep into the ground and sieve through mud to look for human remains. They went to the CMP laboratory where bones are carefully documented, reassembled, DNA-tested and eventually identified. As Desmond Tutu says in the film: “Everywhere in the world when somebody has been killed or disappeared, they all have the same longing. What happened to our loved ones? All of them want to know.”
The film follows three members of The Elders - Desmond Tutu, Lakhdar Brahimi and Jimmy Carter – as they join four young Cypriots to learn about a painful issue: the thousands of people who ‘disappeared’ during the violence and conflict that have kept CY a divided island for over three decades. Together they visit exhumation sites where scientists from the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) dig deep into the ground and sieve through mud to look for human remains. They went to the CMP laboratory where bones are carefully documented, reassembled, DNA-tested and eventually identified. As Desmond Tutu says in the film: “Everywhere in the world when somebody has been killed or disappeared, they all have the same longing. What happened to our loved ones? All of them want to know.”