Nar­ra­tives of con­flict at the Gold­en Apri­cot Yere­van Inter­na­tion­al Film Festival

Since 2004, the Gold­en Apri­cot Yere­van Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val (GAIFF) has been cel­e­brat­ing cin­e­ma from a region at the cross­roads of cul­tures. Many coun­tries in West­ern Asia, includ­ing the Mid­dle East and Cau­ca­sus, are over­shad­owed by bloody con­flicts, from the Syr­i­an civ­il war to Nagorno-Karabakh.

In Yere­van, the cap­i­tal of a coun­try nes­tled between Geor­gia and Iran, cin­e­ma brings peo­ple togeth­er – and region­al films to inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. 100 years ago, Arme­nia was one of the found­ing republics of the Sovi­et Union, fol­low­ing the hor­rors of geno­cide in the Ottoman Empire dur­ing World War One. As recent Armen­ian cin­e­ma por­trays, the trau­ma of the Geno­cide remains, while the new war with Azer­bai­jan cost thou­sands of lives in the con­test­ed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Anoth­er fac­tor com­pli­cates the pic­ture. Once again, rem­i­nis­cent of mass emi­gra­tions to the Cau­ca­sus after the 1917 Rev­o­lu­tion, Yere­van becomes a safe haven for thou­sands of Russ­ian cit­i­zens. Many exiles left their coun­try in the first weeks after the inva­sion of Ukraine, build­ing a new life in the Armen­ian cap­i­tal. I speak to dozens of them, in the cin­e­ma, in cafes, on the street.

Among them are stu­dents, film­mak­ers and crit­ics who are out­spo­ken against the war. None of them wants to return to Rus­sia any time soon. They have already made Yere­van their home, with real estate sky­rock­et­ing, as one Armen­ian com­plains. A Russ­ian stu­dent tells me he recent­ly moved down from neigh­bour­ing Tbil­isi — where the strong pro-Ukrain­ian cli­mate and ​“can­cel­la­tion” of Russ­ian cul­ture made him feel unwelcome.

Ukrain­ian cin­e­ma is strange­ly absent from this year’s pro­gramme. I also didn’t seem to meet any Ukrain­ian film­mak­ers at the fes­ti­val, while Russ­ian cin­e­ma fea­tured promi­nent­ly, includ­ing Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, Alek­sey Fedorchenko’s The Last Dar­ling Bul­gar­ia and Kir­ill Serebrennikov’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife. From GAIFF’s per­spec­tive, Ukraine might appear as one of many wars, select­ing films that deal with the Syr­i­an war, the Turk­ish-Kur­dish con­flict, Nagorno-Karabakh and World War Two. While Flo­ri­an Hoffmann’s Whis­pers of War focus­es on the impact of war on a Kur­dish man in Berlin, Ahmad Saleh’s touch­ing ani­mat­ed short Night tells the true sto­ry of a Pales­tin­ian moth­er wait­ing for news about her daughter’s death.

Ani­ma­tion seems a unique­ly pow­er­ful way to por­tray trau­ma with­out hor­ri­fy­ing view­ers. One of the festival’s high­lights was cer­tain­ly Inna Sahakyan’s ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary Aurora’s Sun­rise which won the Sil­ver Apri­cot prize. Aurora’s Sun­rise is a stun­ning mon­tage of archival mate­r­i­al and ani­ma­tion, based on the true, for­got­ten sto­ry of Auro­ra (Arshaluys) Mardi­gan­ian, a sur­vivor of the Armen­ian Geno­cide who lat­er starred in a silent Hol­ly­wood film about her experience.

After wit­ness­ing the mur­der of her fam­i­ly, Auro­ra is sent on a death march into the Syr­i­an desert, sold as a sex slave, and final­ly man­ages to escape to New York City where she starred as her­self in the 1919 Auc­tion of Souls, a lost epic about the Armen­ian Geno­cide that insti­gat­ed the biggest char­i­ty cam­paign in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Sahakyan tells me how some min­utes from Auc­tion of Souls resur­faced in the Armen­ian Nation­al Archives where they were filed under anoth­er name. The footage was so real­is­tic that Sovi­et archivists thought for 70 years it was a doc­u­men­tary reel rather than pieces from a Hol­ly­wood movie.

A more recent Armen­ian trau­ma is the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war — a region called Art­sakh by Arme­ni­ans. It fea­tures in both Thomas Sideris’ The Pome­gran­ates of Nagorno-Karabakh – with its title refer­ring to Sergey Para­janov, the father of Armen­ian cin­e­ma – and Essam Nagy’s doc­u­men­tary The For­got­ten Home­land, based on archival mate­r­i­al and the director’s inter­views with Armen­ian refugees from the region.

The 2020 con­flict between Arme­nia and Azer­bai­jan was the lat­est esca­la­tion in a still unre­solved con­flict over dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry. In the Q&A, Nagy described him­self as ​“Egypt­ian by nation­al­i­ty, but Armen­ian by choice.” In a late-night con­ver­sa­tion, Nagy vivid­ly shares with me how trav­el­ling through the Armen­ian coun­try­side and speak­ing to its peo­ple had turned his life upside down.

Anoth­er doc­u­men­tary haunt­ed by war is Aliona van der Horst’s sub­tly exper­i­men­tal Turn Your Body to the Sun, telling the aston­ish­ing sto­ry of a daughter’s search for her silent father who had been a Sovi­et pris­on­er of war. The view­ers immerse into a beau­ti­ful­ly edit­ed mon­tage of restored archival mate­r­i­al, inter­views and footage of the daughter’s odyssey to the Far East – end­ing up at the Siber­ian gulag where her father had spent over 10 years of his life.

Today, there’s noth­ing left but trees and snow fields. More than any oth­er film about war, Turn Your Body to the Sun man­ages to nav­i­gate the com­plex ambi­gu­i­ties of ide­ol­o­gy. After all, Horst’s film sug­gests that a human being torn between dif­fer­ent pow­ers is not hero­ic. Rather, they are thrown back to bare life, to their own body, and the burn­ing desire to sur­vive. In one diary entry, the father asks ​“Where is this me?” med­i­tat­ing on whether the suf­fer­ing is even hap­pen­ing to him or some­one else.

When it comes to the cur­rent war in Ukraine, most Rus­sians turn silent very quick­ly. While every­one con­demns the war, no one has any solu­tion of how things might end at home – except with the death of their leader. Gen­er­al­ly, I expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere among exiled film­mak­ers and crit­ics as hope­less, though some excit­ing projects are unfold­ing far away from Moscow. Sup­port­ed by GAIFF, the New School for Russ­ian Cin­e­ma, from which many young tal­ents emerged in recent years, is about to open a branch in Yere­van, with some stu­dents hav­ing already relocated.

Among the teach­ers are pro­lif­ic direc­tors Dmit­ry Mamuliya and Albert Ser­ra who aim to bring new wind into the Armen­ian film scene. Two ses­sions are ded­i­cat­ed to last year’s films from the New School, com­ple­ment­ed by the mas­ter­class Time and Dark­ness with Geor­gian-born Dmit­ry Mamuliya. Watch­ing these stu­dents’ films today has a prophet­ic feel to it. They are a dis­turb­ing barom­e­ter of pre-war Moscow, with nau­se­at­ing vio­lence erupt­ing in Anas­ta­sia Veber’s short Trap, chan­nelled into a stylised chore­og­ra­phy of bod­ies. The lay­er of civil­i­sa­tion in these shorts, includ­ing one about a young man in dog cos­tume, is dan­ger­ous­ly thin.

A sym­bio­sis of exces­sive drug use and increas­ing polit­i­cal oppres­sion also shapes Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s doc­u­men­tary How to Save a Dead Friend in which the 2000s in Moscow rise again as one long bad trip. This gen­er­al feel­ing of con­fu­sion over com­plex­i­ty dom­i­nates almost all films that deal with war. It is cap­tured in its clear­est form in Serra’s para­noid Paci­fic­tion, where the dan­ger of nuclear destruc­tion mere­ly lingers under the turquoise sur­face of strik­ing­ly clear waters.

The 2022 edi­tion of Gold­en Apri­cot Yere­van Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val ran between 10 – 17 June.