Fish n’ Chips 2011

Andy [Marios Ioannou] is a Greek-Cypriot immigrant who works at a London fish and chip shop. He shares the place with his German girlfriend Karin [Marlene Kaminsky] and her daughter Emma [Anne-Marie O’Sullivan], all under the watchful eye of his Turkish-Cypriot boss Hassan, who prefers to be called Jimmy. Andy’s elderly mother [Alkistis Pavlidou] as Mother suffers from dementia, frequently running away and imagining that she is returning to her homeland.

Seizing a perfect excuse, Andy plans a trip to Cyprus for his mother, hoping to give Karin and Emma some rest as well. He travels to Cyprus with his mother and stays with his brother Anestis [Diomedes Koufteros] and his family, where the atmosphere and surroundings begin to loosen the tension that has built up at home. Seeing how much Karin and Emma enjoy Cyprus, he convinces them to join him in opening a fish and chip shop there. The venture soon collapses when Andy realises that the beach Anestis had steered him toward attracts mostly Cypriots, who are not big consumers of fish and chips, and the business struggles to attract customers.

The failure brings misery and creates conflict among the family, with tension between Anestis and Andy, and between Karin and Emma. Andy stubbornly refuses to face reality and tries to keep the shop going, prompting Karin and Emma to return to London and seek their old jobs with Jimmy. Meanwhile, Andy’s mother—ever restless, still wandering in search of a homeland—manages to enter a house in Northern Cyprus that turns out to be owned by a retired British woman, a property sold behind Andy’s back by Anestis.

In a twist, Andy learns that his father was not killed by the Turks during the war, but that his real father is Jimmy. This hidden love story between his mother and Jimmy forces him to confront his own bigoted views of Turkish-Cypriots and to rethink what “home” really means. Realising that he is something of a tourist in his own country, Andy returns to London only to find that Jimmy is planning to retire and hand him ownership of the fish shop, signaling a new chapter for his life and for the shop he has spent so long trying to preserve.