Golden Globes: Three Armenian films submitted for consideration
PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia has submitted three movies for consideration for Best Foreign Film at the 74th annual Golden Globe Awards - "The Last Inhabitant," "Hot Country, Cold Winter," and "Earthquake," the The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's official website says.
"As a filmmaker raised in Nagorno Karabakh I have listened to stories of hardships endured by my family and villagers, and of their struggles into dealing with such a devastating inter-ethnic conflict." So says Jivan Avetisyan, a prolific 35 year-old Armenian director with a solid documentary background, who was born in this mountainous landlocked region in the Southwestern tip of Armenia bordering with Azerbaijan. He even had to do his mandatory military service there, in the province's Defense Army from 1999 to 2001.
It is not surprising that he decided to make it the setting of "The Last Inhabitant," his eighth feature film, which centers around Abgar, the only Armenian of Christian faith left in the village of Gyurjevan, now devastated and in near ruins, after everyone else has been deported. Because of his skills as a stonemason, he is assigned to help build a mosque by the Azeri occupants. He also has to take care of his daughter Yurga, traumatized after witnessing her husband's murder. As the situation deteriorates around them with increasing enemy danger and lack of food, they find solace in their memories of an idealized past, when peace and happiness still prevailed. The last resort for those who have not much to hope for. With its often elegiac and poetic approach the film is able to achieve a touching portrait of survival and at the same time humanizing the protagonists and their fate, how tragic it may be.
Another of the movies sent for consideration is "Earthquake", which is based on the real events surrounding the disastrous earthquake which struck Armenia in 1988. The terrible earthquake claimed at least 25,000 lives and left about half a million people homeless. For director Sarik Andreasyan it was a very special project, in which he wanted, after almost 30 years, to tell the story not only of death and destruction but also to show the hope and community spirit in the face of the nightmare.
The story is built around a Russian family living in the Armenian city of Leninankan. Anna Berezhnaya (Maria Mironova) with her son Vanya (Daniil Izotov) and daughter Katya (Anastasia Savkina) awaits the return from prison of her husband (Konstantin Lavronenko) who eight years prior was sentenced to prison for the death of two people in a car accident.
"Hot Country, Cold Winter" tells about the situation in Armenia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Some of the most suffering people there were the members of intelligentsia, who found themselves without means of existence and no sense of purpose. In his film "Hot Country, Cold Winter" Armenian director David Sarafian mixes realism and poetry to explore another dark period in the history of his long-suffering people. But don't expect to get all the answers to the many questions asked by this film.
On the surface it is a story of a man and a woman from artistic circles who are suffering through circumstances of a total winter energy crisis. But in some ways this is merely a pretext to delve deeper into the problem of an artist living through hard times. Their recollections and their imagination are used here to help understand not only the story as such, but to appeal to core human values which are universal.
"Hot Country, Cold Winter" was an official selection for the main competition of the 2015 Tallinn International Film Festival in Estonia.