Tert, Armenia
Oct 31 2009

Film Diplomacy Instead of Football Diplomacy, or Armenian Film Wins
Award in Turkey
13:51 ¢ 31.10.09

Golden Apricot International Film Fesitval director, filmmaker
Harutyun Khachatryan’s film Border (`Sahman’ in Armenian) won the Best
Film Award, along with Russian director Alexei German Jr.’s Paper
Soldier, at the 46th annual Golden Orange Film Festival in the Turkish
city of Antalya.

At the festival, Border was introduced by Director of Photography
(Cinematographer) Vrej Petrosyan and film critic and Golden Apricot
Film Festival Art Director Susanna Harutyunyan. In the presenters’
opinion, this award, which is the film’s 6th international award, is a
good opportunity to understand that `Film Diplomacy’ may also be quite
useful, perhaps even more effective, than Football Diplomacy. As an
aside, the festival was held during the same days that the Armenian
football team visited Bursa.

However, Turkish paper Hurriyet Daily News, in a fairly long article
about this year’s Golden Orange festival, didn’t mention Harutyun
Khachatryan’s notable win, nor did it mention the Armenian film at
all.

The Other Bank by Georgian film director Georgi Ovashvili won the
second award in the same competition. This film had won the main award
in Yerevan’s 6th Golden Apricot Film Festival.

Just before the festival in Antalya, Border was screened at Romania’s
International Festival, where it won the the art critics jury’s
special award `for showcasing the tragedy of being a refugee in an
innovative and cinematic way [that is, without words].’

The film also screened at international festivals in Warsaw (Poland),
Busan (South Korea), and Tokyo (Japan). simultaneously with the
Turkish festival, and in November, the film will be screened in
Florence and in Spain’s Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijon.

>From December 1`6, a Harutyun Khachatryan retrospective will be
organized in Tblisi, Georgia, which will be the third retrospective
screening after Moscow and Montevideo, Uruguay.