For this year’s Laou Laou Car-Free Day, ABR – Alternative Brains Rule is turning birdboxes into tiny street cinemas.
Placed around the neighbourhood, the birdboxes will screen a selection of very short animated films about traffic, public space, neighbourhood life and the ways we move through our cities. Visitors will be invited to stop, look inside and discover the films as they walk around the car-free streets.
The programme includes:
- Enough by Anna Mantzaris, in which the pressures of everyday city life push people to act on impulses they would normally suppress.
- Elevator Alone by Anastasia Papadopoulou, observing four people in an elevator and the difference between how we behave in shared spaces and when nobody is watching.
- Montrose Avenue by Pat Shewchuk and Marek Colek / Tin Can Forest, a portrait of daily life in a Toronto neighbourhood, seen through the eyes of a six-year-old girl.
- Parking Sucks by Kristoffer Stokkerud, a short animation about the familiar frustration of trying to park in the city.
Together, the films look at the city at a small, human scale: its traffic and pressures, but also its shared spaces, everyday encounters and neighbourhoods. By placing these works directly on the street, the installation creates a small interruption in the usual rhythm of the city and invites people to consider how else we might move through it and live together within it.
The birdbox cinemas are ABR’s contribution to Laou Laou, a community-led, people-first event in Agioi Omologites. “Laou laou” means “slowly, slowly” in Cypriot, and for one day the neighbourhood’s streets will close to cars and open to walking, cycling, games, markets, food, workshops, music and activities for all ages.
The activation is created as part of EUnity20 and connects most directly with the values of democratic participation and social cohesion. Laou Laou gives residents, organisations and visitors an active role in shaping the neighbourhood for the day. The street becomes a shared civic space: somewhere to meet, participate, exchange ideas and experience a different version of the city together.
Laou Laou is shaped by OPU together with the friends and neighbours of Agioi Omologites, with the support of Nicosia Municipality, the Embassy of the Netherlands and Sustainable Mobility Cyprus. It forms part of European Mobility Week.
Event details
Birdbox Cinemas x Laou Laou
Sunday, 20 September 2026
10:00 – 22:00
Agioi Omologites, Lefkosia
Also read: “Hold Onto Me” chosen as Cyprus’ official Oscar entry
For more videos and updates, check out our YouTube channel
