Բարև, ես եմ

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Artak has served his military service in the Russian countryside where he meets Valya. But Valya's mother refuses to send her only daughter to “these far highlands, where earthquakes happen all the time”. Artak is forced to ask his contrasting and numerous relatives –Armenian villagers– to visit a remote Russian village to bring a bride to Armenia.

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.