Armenia
On Easter 2018, a man put on a backpack and began to walk across Armenia. His mission: to inspire a velvet revolution and topple the corrupt regime that enjoys absolute power in his post-soviet nation. With total access to all key players, this documentary tells the story of what happened in the next 40 days.
A photographer and his wife travel across Armenia photographing churches for a calendar project. Travelling with them is a local man acting as their driver and guide. As the project nears completion, the distance between husband and wife grows.
Artur is an Armenian guy who dreams about a career in filmmaking, but his grandfather wants him to take over the family wine business. When a bad review from an Estonian critic threatens to ruin the family business, Artur has to go to Tallinn to set things straight. There he meets the feisty Ingrid and things take an unexpected turn.
The story of how Aurora Mardiganian (1901-94), a survivor of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire (1915-17), became a Hollywood silent film star.
Starting in 1988, a fierce battle raged between the two neighbouring states of Armenia and Azerbaijan (until 1991 part of the Soviet Union) over Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1994, an armistice gave control of Karabakh and the Azeri territory in-between to Armenia. Director Vadan Hovhannisyan shows the footage he shot as an independent war reporter on the front 12 years ago. He runs across the battlefield with a shaky camera, under a fierce shower of bullets. Scrawny soldiers with sunken eyes spend their days smoking, waiting and taking cover in trenches. Fallen comrades are carried down forest paths. Then, Hovhannisyan revisits the soldiers now, bringing prints of stills and frontline footage on his laptop. Although they have put on some weight, many of them are “victims of the peace,” as Hovhannisyan calls it in his voice-over.
After the devastating Spitak earthquake of December 7th, Konstantin Berezhnoy, a 50-year-old Russian, and Robert Melkonyan, a 28-year-old Armenian, work together to rescue the desperate survivors.
Lena returns to her home in a remote, war-ravaged Armenian village to try and persuade her grandparents to leave with her for safety in Moscow.
In 1948, decades after fleeing Armenia to the US as a child, Charlie returns in the hopes of finding a connection to his roots, but what he finds instead is a country crushed under Soviet rule. After being unjustly imprisoned, Charlie falls into despair, until he discovers that he can see into a nearby apartment from his cell window – the home of a prison guard.
A group of intrepid explorers go on a journey of discovery and excitement as they climb and live atop a 17,000ft mountain in Eastern Turkey to conduct a scientific expedition to determine the final resting place of Noah’s Ark. Finding Noah is more than a quest for answers, it is a testament of the human spirit, where belief and the need for exploration transcend risk and limitations.
Barbecue is about more than grilling a piece of meat. It’s a ritual performed religiously across the world. For some it’s a path to salvation. It is the pride of nations. And the stories told around the fires become a way to bring the world together.
Film director Sergey Paradjanov creates brilliant films. His nonconformist behavior conflicts with Soviet System. He is committed to prison for being eccentric. His indestructible love for beauty allows him to withstand the years of imprisonment, isolation and oblivion.
