Star of Hope

Filmed in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, Lusine Sargsyans drama depicts the lives of various individuals living in an apartment complex during the Armenian-Azerbadjanian war of the mid 1990’s. The situation is cruel and hard for the citizens of Yerevan. The need for food and electricity is dominating the international news from the city, while inside this abode in the centre of the city daily life goes on in spite of desperation. A rare narrative insight into a war that had a huge impact on Armenian life, Sargsyans five unique stories about relationships, struggles and faith preach a down-to-earth sermon about the cruelty of wars, and the strength of humour, love, and community.

The feature film is based on true events that changed two families forever. The story, both comical, satirical and a tragedy begins in the city of Yerevan, Armenia. Grigor Janoyan, a professor of agriculture at the University of Yerevan, dies from a freak accident, almost as strange as the events that soon follow. In accordance with Armenian tradition, the relatives bring the deceased into their home for the "viewing" by his friends and family before the burial. The family, consumed with grief fails to realize that the body on the dining room table is not Grigor. A friend of the family, while paying respects, discovers the mistake. Grigors look-a-like, Ruben Pashayan was the head of Armenia's organized crime families. Trouble is inevitable, but as the story continues, Grigor's son Hayk and his friends begin the quest of finding his father's body.

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.

the story of a young boy who must go to the store by himself for the first time. Things get complicated when the 140 Dram his mother gave him for milk are not enough, and he has to make a difficult choice.

Hovering between the realms of poetry and history, this stunningly photographed, elegiac work – shot mostly in long takes – mixes cryptic metaphor and fantastic symbolism to tell the story of Avetik, an Armenian filmmaker exiled in Berlin. In sensuous, lyric styling, Askarian employs dreamlike images to reflect the history of his homeland, tranquil childhood memories, images inspired by erotic medieval poetry, and autobiographical shades of his own exile in Germany.

The Lark Farm is set in a small Turkish town in 1915. It deals with the genocide of Armenians, looking closely at the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes of one wealthy Armenian family.

In Munich, the Armenian Areg dreams of studying cinema with his German girlfriend Lilly. Until her widowed mother fell seriously ill with diabetes. Areg and her little brother Garnik have to take care of her.

The film is dedicated to the Armenian monk and genius composer Komitas, and the 2 million victims on his people in Turkey in 1915. The final 20 years of Komitas life were spent in various mental hospitals. The destiny of Komitas? This is the magic beauty of Armenian culture and the abhorrent brutality of Armenian history. A cultural and artistic world that was slaughtered with a curved knife. A humanity that doggedly advances towards an apocalyptic catastrophe, that does not recognize its own original purpose, eradicates its own memory, its final roots.

An unconventional story conveyed with a delicate sensuality about two broken souls and a brief encounter reigniting memories and leading to difficult choices.

In Soviet Azerbaijan, a divorced Armenian couple fights over the custody of their daughter, Ashen. Stolen from one parent to another, Ashen's guardians are tragically killed in the bloody war surrounding them. Will the arrival of a new savior finally bring Ashen freedom? Official selection of the Global Lens Collection presented by the Global Film Initiative.

The Armenian national hero, David Bek, leads a major Armenian uprising against Safavid Persia in the Syunik region in the 18th century.

The film is about the civil war in the Zangezur (Syunik) province of Armenia in the early 1920s. The last Dashnak battalions headed by Sparapet Nzhdeh still opposed both the incursion of Red Army and the local Bolshevik partisans.

The tranquility of a remote Armenian mountain community is disrupted when a group of shepherds affected by the pangs of an evening hunger, decide to butcher and barbecue the sheep of another's that have strayed into their herd. An official inquiry by the city police complicates matters, and questions of law, morality and community only seem to lead to further entanglements.

Explores the Ottoman Empire killings of more than one million Armenians during World War I. The film describes not only what happened before, during and since World War I, but also takes a direct look at the genocide denial maintained by Turkey to the present day.

Yeva is a young woman who escapes her influential in-laws with her daughter Nareh, after her husband’s tragic death and takes refuge in one of the villages of Karabakh, Armenia… Yeva is a complete stranger in this village and is obliged to live her daily life in disguise.

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.

Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.

Robert Sternvall, a German journalist, returns to Artsakh in 2016 to cover the war which has been reignited after a 22-year ceasefire. In the result of his journalistic investigation, Robert meets Sophia, a young opera singer, who happens to be the daughter of missing photojournalist Edgar Martirosyan, whom Robert abandoned in captivity during the fall of the village of Talish in 1992. Robert and Sophia’s frequent rendezvouses ignite a passionate romance...

This is a story about returning to ones ancestral homeland. Anna is a cardiologist who discovers her father has fled to his native Armenia after being diagnosed with a heart problem. Despite their contentious relationship, she sets out to bring her father back for this operation. Anna is a tough-minded, headstrong woman with little feeling for her fathers homeland or patience with its politics and socially intrusive culture, yet she finds this journey not only a reunion of sorts, but one of reconciliation as well.

Two years after receiving news of his father’s death in WWII a young boy continues to wait for trains from the front. The boy lives with his crippled uncle rather than with his mother, who has remarried and has another child. Then one day the father returns.