Former New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian will be inaugurated as official Patron of the Armenian Film Festival, which returns to Sydney for its 6th edition. Since 2016, Ms Berejiklian has attended and opened every Armenian Film Festival in Sydney.
Co-founders of the Armenian Film Festival, Hourie Demirjian and Margaret Chater said: “It’s a great honor for our festival to have the support of Gladys Berejiklian – a proud Armenian who has a deep appreciation for history and films. We thank her for her ongoing commitment in representing the Armenian community and multiculturalism in Australia.”
A highlight of this year’s festival is documentary 45 DAYS: THE FIGHT FOR A NATION – a film by British conflict documentary journalist reporter and filmmaker, Emile Ghessen, who has flown in from the Russia-Ukraine war to launch his film in Australia as part of the festival. It covers the largely unreported 44-day war on the indigenous Armenian Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) by Azerbaijan, backed by NATO member Turkey – only 18 months before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.