"Movie on forbidden love stirs Cyprus passions
Mon Sep 4, 2006 1:24 PM BST148
By Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) - A film about forbidden love in Cyprus has stirred passions on the ethnically partitioned island, with its showing at the Venice Film Festival this week embroiled in a row over funding.
Citing a contractual breach in a sponsorship deal, the Cypriot government has withheld funds for the 123-minute movie "Akamas" due to be screened in Venice on Saturday.
Its director says the move smacks of political censorship -- which the government denies -- because he defied calls to cut a controversial scene.
The movie, the first Cypriot entry at the festival, is the story of a Turkish Cypriot man and a Greek Cypriot woman defying family disapproval and war to stay together."
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