Armenian

Beware Masterpiece!

Plot: Sahak Kamsaryan, a teacher from a mountain village, deciphers an inscription carved on an ancient stone and discovers that it dates back a thousand years to his native Lernasar. Determined to celebrate the village’s millennium, Sahak sends invitations to his fellow villagers scattered across the country, hoping to commemorate the occasion with grand festivities. However, news reaches the village that a procession is en route bearing the remains of Sirak Agayan, whose accusations once unjustly harmed many residents of Lernasar. As the funeral procession arrives in Lernasar, it is met by a group of elderly villagers blocking its path.Read More »

Artavazd Peleshian wrote:
“It was during my work on the film We that I became convinced that my interests were elsewhere, that the very essence and main thrust of montage for me was found less in assembling scenes and more in the possibility of disjoining them, not in their juxtaposition but their separation. It became clear that what interested me above all wasn’t joining two elements of the montage, but rather separating them by inserting a third, fifth, even tenth element between them.Read More »

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Directed by Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan • 2022 • Armenia

A group portrait that captures the hybrid nature of modern-day Armenia, Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan’s dreamlike documentary explores the gaps between fantasy and reality in the lives of four characters. Karen is a farmer from the provincial north on a quest to find the perfect wife. Melania is an ageing lift operator in a Yerevan hospital who dreams of becoming an astronaut. Amasia and Sona are two queer teenage girls hiding from the unforgiving world below in their rooftop “fort”. Blending observational documentary with a range of impressionistic techniques, the directorial duo show their homeland to be a country on the brink of painful but necessary transformation.Read More »

Far behind the lines Vahe receives the news of his father’s death. Small boy neither could accept it nor reconcile himself with the new family of his mother who married to another man. The boy prefers to live with his handicapped uncle and every day visits the railway station waiting the trains coming from the frontline.Read More »

At only 14 years old, Aurora lost everything during the horror of the Armenian genocide. Four years later, through luck and extraordinary courage, she escaped to New York, where her story became a media sensation. Starring as herself in Auction of Souls, an early Hollywood blockbuster, Aurora became the face of one of the largest charity campaigns in American history. With a blend of vivid animation, interviews with Aurora herself, and 18 minutes of surviving footage from her lost silent epic, Aurora’s Sunrise revives a forgotten story of survival.Read More »

A film about the great Komitas, one of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, who wasn’t killed, but went crazy and kept silence for 20 years.

The central character is Edgar Novents, a well-known writer and lecturer on the Department of Journalism of the University. He is focused on writing a novel about Rev. Komitas, the great Armenian composer and musicologist, and this provides the bridge between the present and the past. Relying on historical facts, archived documents, psychological hypotheses, Edgar Novents tries to elicit the Paris period of Komitas’ life, to penetrate the enigma of the last years of life of the great son of the Armenian people in the Psychiatric hospital of Villejuif, to bring to light his Great Silence in a gentle and restrained way. To convey fidelity to his novel, The Great Silence, Edgar Novents is trying to share in and understand the sufferings of his literary hero. As a wellbornintellectual, Edgar Novents also is the chronicler of his time, he is always in the focus of modern events, which have been so much shaped by the horrors of the past.Read More »

Today, Mel Divan is a successful American businessman with a terminal illness. But long ago he was an infamous criminal who escaped from a mental institution in Communist Armenia. With the rise of capitalism, Mel returns to Armenia to make good on a promise to deliver the bounty of his robbery to the widow of a fellow thief. Mel plans on spending only enough time in Armenia to locate the widow. But nostalgia and fate drive him, as the same mental institution from which he escaped is now on the auction block. Mel buys it and finds refuge in running the psychiatric hospital while living among its eclectic residents and helping each in a unique way. Mel will live his final days as a saint provided he can keep one step ahead of the Chief Psychiatrist and a local Mob Boss.Read More »

In April (Armenia 1985), on the 70th anniversary of the genocide, on April 24, 1985, Vigen Chaldranyan stages a conversation between the generations in a mixture of comedy and bitter seriousness. As every year, the veterans talk about the days of the war. But while their sons can no longer hear all this, the grandchildren feel called upon to “solve the Armenian question”.Read More »

Tragic events in Armenian history are echoed in this incisive film. Arakel Eloyan, a survivor of the 1915 genocide, has built a new life with his family in Soviet Armenia.
Still, he longs to once again see his home village, now a part of Turkey. His nostalgic yearning pulls him across the Soviet border, but the Soviet government views his journey as a potential act of treason.Read More »