"The 'Golden Apricot' film festival in Yerevan took place for the 20th time this year.
With star guests like the Dardenne brothers, the French director Claire Simon and the Filipino arthouse master Lav Diaz. With the latter two, I, Program Director Bernd Buder, had the pleasure and honor of being on the jury of the International Competition, along with Armenian filmmaker Inna Sahakyan and Raed Faridzadeh of the Farabi Cinema Foundation from Iran.
Not only in the composition of the total of four festival juries, the Armenian capital proves to be a crossroads of cultures between East and West. Which creates a uniquely intercultural atmosphere that must be witnessed. While many of the Armenian films deal with the tragic aspects of history, from the 1915 genocide to the last war with Azerbaijan in 2020.
In 2024, the FFC will devote a focus to Armenia. The Golden Apricot Film Festival, with its competitions for regional feature films and documentaries, Armenian short films, and the "gaiff pro" pitching forum for regional film projects, is among the most important venues for research.
This year's winners include director Sergei Dvortsevoy who was on the jury of the 2019 FFC and was awarded a prize for his body of work in Yerevan, and the Greek docu-comedy BLACK STONE, grand prize winner of the international competition - a filmmaker and a film that in very different ways but with similar sensitivity describe everyday life situations and the fractures, whims and hopes they contain.