The feature film "The Last Inhabitant" by Armenian filmmaker Jivan Avetisyan about the ongoing conflict in Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) was named the best feature film in Pomegranate Film Festival in Toronto, Canada.
The movie was among the 40 other films submitted for consideration, with Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, Arsinee Khanjian, actor/producer Dean Cain, Montel Williams and many others in attendance.
Avetisyan's eighth feature film, "The Last Inhabitant" 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.
Earlier, the film was named the best feature film by the Scandinavian International Film Festival, while actor Aleksandr Khachatryan, meanwhile, won the best actor award in Finland.