The 20th-anniversary edition of the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival, running from 9-16 July this year, coincides with the centenary of Armenian cinema, hence the festival will pay special tribute to these two significant milestones. Over two dozen Armenian films will be showcased in various categories, while a special programme dedicated to the aforementioned 100th anniversary will also be presented. Meanwhile, in order to mark the two decades since its creation, the festival will conclude with a screening of the new, colour version of Calendar (1993) by Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan.
The International Feature-length Competition jury will be led by acclaimed Filipino director Lav Diaz, who, together with filmmakers Claire Simon (France) and Inna Sahakyan (Armenia), as well as FilmFestival Cottbus director Bernd Buder (Germany), will be tasked with deciding on the winning titles from among the 11 contenders. Alongside opening film Luka [+] (Belgium/Italy/Netherlands/Bulgaria/Armenia) by Jessica Woodworth, which stars up-and-coming Armenian actor Samvel Tadevossian in one of the leading roles, seven other titles from the competition line-up are European productions or co-productions: Chris Pellerin’s Waiting for the Flood (Belgium), Spiros Jacovides’s Black Stone [+] (Greece), Simão Cayatte’s Drifter (Portugal/France/Poland), Naomi Uman’s three sparks [+] (Mexico/Albania), Farnaz Jurabchian and Mohammadreza Jurabchian's Silent House (Iran/France/Canada/Philippines/Qatar), Lois Patiño’s Samsara [+] (Spain), and Zara Dwinger’s Kiddo [+] (Netherlands).
Among the ten titles in the Regional Panorama Competition, focused on the Western Asian area, notable highlights are Daniel Kötter’s visually impressive Landshaft [+] (Germany/Armenia), which will open the programme; Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt’s mystical Magic Mountain [+], which recently won the Best Documentary Award at DocsBarcelona; the discovery from the latest IDFA Notes on Displacement [+] (Palestine/Germany/Qatar) by Khaled Jarrar, following the journey undertaken by a refugee family from Syria to Germany; the winner of the Amnesty International Film Prize in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale, The Burdened (Yemen/Sudan/Saudi Arabia) by Amr Gamal; and IFFR’s latest Big Screen Award winner, Endless Borders [+] (Germany/Iran/Czech Republic) by Abbas Amini. The section’s jury is chaired by Kazakh director Sergei Dvortsevoy, and also features US actor, filmmaker and writer of Armenian descent Michael Goorjian, and New Zealand-born, Berlin-based film critic Carmen Gray.
Meanwhile, the GAIFF Pro industry sidebar, taking place from 10-14 July, will introduce a carefully curated list of 17 new projects by emerging filmmakers, again from the Western Asian region – 12 in development and five at the work-in-progress stage – bringing together filmmakers and producers from over 20 countries. The line-up includes projects from Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Georgia, Iran and Armenia, with various co-production partner countries also on board.
Additionally, for the first time, GAIFF Pro will organise the Short Cuts Nest market for Armenian projects, with the objective being to boost the development of the local short-film sector. The teams behind the five selected projects will be competing for a special Equipment Prize during the pitching sessions.
