Report from the 12th ”Golden Apricot” International Film Festival, Yerevan, July 12-19 2015, published on the FIPRESCI official site
The most important film event of
the Caucasian region, the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film
Festival has become, from year to year, not only a centre of Armenian
cinema, but also a meeting place for the cinema markets of the
Eurasian countries from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the
countries of the former Soviet Union. Sharing a similar recent
history, these film industries, even though they have different
identities, have a number of common approaches both to the art of
cinema and to major values of humankind. Some common human typologies
and common ideals seem to be founded in their past.
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| In front of ”Moskva” Cinema Hall, the centre of the Festival |
The selection proposed by the
organizers of the 12th edition of the Golden Apricot for
consideration by the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical juries was composed
mostly of films belonging to the non-competitive programme "Films
Across Borders" (seven films), from the International
Competition (two films) and from the "Armenian Panorama"
(one film). Although they belonged to different sections, all ten
films reveal aspects of a common sensitivity and vision of the world,
and together they somehow complete the puzzle of a unique picture,
specific to the spirit of the Golden Apricot.
Films dealing with actual social
problems typical of the countries they come from, such as Ben
Zaken, Corn Island (Simindis kundzuli) and Line of Credit
(Kreditis limiti), films reconsidering the recent historical
past, such as Moskvich, My Love ("Moskvich", im
ser), Pioneer Heroes (Pionery-geroi) and Snow Pirates
(Kar korsanlari), but also films treating such eternal
themes as childhood and friendship (Sivas), the struggle for
inner maturation in a patriarchal world (40 Days of Silence
(Chilla)), the confrontation between city and countryside (The
Move (Pereezd)) and that between teacher and pupil, portrayed as
a dangerous and destructive love story (The Clinch (Klinch)),
form a collective, multinational cinematic portrait whose common
ideals are the search for beauty and harmony and the belief in
authentic human values, which secular civilization is about to
totally lose.
The way they are approaching and
treating these themes determines the value of the movies. And even
with the limited selection we were invited to evaluate there were
quite a few good films that deserve to be recognised by juries and to
be seen by a larger public.
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| Reception at Echimiadzin. In foreground: Harutyun Khachatryan, general director of the festival, ans His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians |
The most engrossing films that
found favour with all members of the international film critics jury,
but in the end did not get the prize, were Sivas, Snow Pirates
and Corn Island. The first two, whose action takes place in
the provinces of Turkey, explore with tenderness the universe of
childhood, a universe based on friendship and the struggle for
survival at a time of deep economic crisis (Snow Pirates) and
on the relationship between children and animals (Sivas).
Similarly, the struggle for survival of peasants in the turbulent
period of the Georgian-Abkhazian war is the theme of the
multi-international production directed by George Ovashvili, Corn
Island, which had previously received a FIPRESCI Prize and a lot
of other important awards.
The nostalgia for the former
Soviet Union, or, more precisely, the desolate and tragicomical
lament of the citizens of a no longer existing empire where each one
knew his place in society, is the common theme of the films Pioneers
Heroes and Moskvich, My Love. This latter polyphonic
social and human panorama, masterfully staged, makes Aram
Shahbazyan's film one of the discoveries of the festival.
A Russian theme also resonates in
the directing debut of the prominent actor Sergei Puskepalis, The
Clinch. The film reveals the extreme polarization of Russian
society between the rebellious criminal youth and the middle-aged
intelligentsia, in other words between the so-called "New
Russians" and "homo sovieticus" – two different
kinds of misfits; the school, which reunites them formally, cannot
overcome the huge gap between them, leading to tragicomical
confrontations. The film starts on a solid basis, but gradually
dissolves into an overloaded and poorly controlled narrative.
Another social theme of failed
adaptation is reflected in the excellent Israeli film Ben Zaken,
directed by Efrat Corem, an almost minimalist family drama about the
incapacity for love and tolerance of people with broken lives that
had been subject to the loss of a member of their families; without
resorting to political or ideological commentary, the film discreetly
reveals the long-term and painful consequences of the Israeli war.
The Georgian multiple
co-production Line of Credit, directed by Salome Alexi,
another feature film debutante, also deals with a dramatic social
topic. In a kind of social report, the film explores the story of a
woman who loses the ancestral house of her family as a result of a
vicious circle of credit debts she incurs while trying to survive the
economical transition of her country.
The remaining two films, The
Move and 40 Days of Silence, transport us into the
contemplative universe of Central Asia, with its breath-taking
mountainous landscapes and eternal stillness. Both filmmakers, Marat
Sarulu and Saodat Ismailova, lead us into introspective worlds in
which humans come to know themselves and strengthen their characters
by descending into speechlessness and meditation, and in the latter
case into a vow of silence.
