The Golden Apricot-7. A week in the cinema Yerevan

On July 11-18 – the 7th Golden Apricot International Film Festival will be held in Yerevan. The director of the Festival Program Michael Stamboltsyan and the artistic director Susanna Harutyunyan presented the competition plan and the selected films.

This year the festival will be held in the traditional format. The contests of international feature films and documentaries, as well as Armenian Panorama competitions will be. Accordingly 13, 14 and 17 films are represented in these categories.

“In the all three competitions such films are selected which correspond to the lath of our festival”, said Stamboltsyan, “at the last moment we included Sergey Loznitca’s film “My joy” which was very scandalous in the Cannes Festival”.

He said that such films are mainly included in the festival which highlights the life, social topics or topics related to human relations: “We do not select from fantastic genre,” said Stamboltsyan.

The Turkish director Reha Erdemi’s film called “Space”, which was made in Kars, is included in the Feature film competition. “While in no way it has a direct connection with the genocide, but after watching the film, one feels the connection,” said Stamboltsyan.

The works of two Armenian directors Suren Babayan and Vigen Chaldranyan accordingly called “Do not look in the mirror “and “Maestro” are included in the Feature film competition.

The German director Eric Fridler’s film called “It is a trouble”, included in the Documentary films competition, is about the Armenian Genocide.”It has been very scandalous in Germany,” said Stamboltsyan, there is no Armenian in the creative group, but one watching the film has an impression that the Armenians have worked on it”. And Susanna Harutyunyan added that after screening the film the director received thousands hate males by the Turkish population in Germany.

Stamboltsyan mentioned that he noticed the growth of audience interest in the documentary films. “I think that this year as last year, Puppet theater room will be full,” he said, “films will be translated into Armenian”.

Henry Verno’s film called “Mother” will open the festival, because this year it is the 90th anniversary of the director. The French Armenian director Serge Avetisyan’s film called “Dogs’ island” won the Cannes’ “Golden palm branch”, in the short film competition.

He as well as Atom Egoyan will be present at the festival.

This year the festival has received about 500 applications from 75 countries of the world, including for the first time Jordan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Costa Rica, etc.

5 International juries will judge 3 Film competition programs: the international feature, international documentary, Armenian Panorama, as well as FIPRESSI, or International Federation of Film Critics and the Ecumenical or independent churches jury.