ALEX FARBA

YEREVAN Film Festival 2016

My arrival here in Yerevan for the Film Festival coincided with the  events in Nice which have sent the world into shock when a Franco-Arab truck driver plowed into the crowd celebrating Bastille day on the beachfront promenade in the Riviera city.

This news, almost immediately followed by the news of a coup attempt by the army in Turkey has dominated the Tv waves ever since. Initial body count, 84 people killed in Nice,  180 or more killed in Turkey. Hundreds injured. Hundreds more traumatised.

News like this  unfortunately  makes a small film festival in a small Caucasian country like Armenia seem like a trivial side-show,

Nevertheless,

The Show must go on, so here is what I have seen so far in Yerevan at the 13th Golden Apricot Film Festival.

A brief closeup sighting of movie star Jacqueline Bisset , 72, who is the trophy guest of the festival.

"Who Killed the Armenians" a powerful highly detailed Egyptian documentary on the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, the first film on this deplorable subject from an Islamic country.

"In A Better World", Danish drama by star director Susanne Bier, focusing on a severely disturbed teenage boy and a Swedish surgeon who does volunteer medical service in a war torn African country.

BULLITT, the classic 1968 Hollywood thriller by Peter Yates, starring Steve McQueen and featuring the amazing car chase with McQueen at the wheel of a hot black Mustang pursuing the villains over the bouncy hills of San Francisco. Jacqeline Bissett was third billed although her role as McQueen's wife was extremely small limited to a few bedroom scenes and not much more. BULLITT was shown as a special screening at the state-of-art Cinema Star in the State-of-Art Dalmas Mall on the southern outskirts of the city far from the festival center at the Kino Moskva.

"A Very Ordinary Citizen", a new Iranian drama about domestic alienation, the relinquishing of a trip to Canada by a young woman, and the stretching if the law by an elderly Iranian-Armenian man. Director Masjid Barzegar, a leading Teheran filmmaker and producer,mid I siting the festival  Teheran is only a stone's throw away from Yerevan and has a significant Armenian population.

Still to come in the festival sampling of Bissett films; "Murder on the Orient Express", 1974, and Truffaut's "Day For Night", 1973.

Ps:  I spent a night in Nice and walked the Promenade des Anglais, scene of Bastille Night truck rampage just a few weeks ago on the way back from Cannes

ALEX

Hotel ANI Plaza

Yerevan