Armenia: film festival "Golden Apricot" to receive 30 thousand dollars from "CIS Fund"

The Interstate Humanitarian Cooperation Fund of the CIS Member States "CIS Fund", headed by Armen Smbatyan, the Armenian Ambassador to Russia, has provided for the program "Cinema of CIS: 20 years of independence," which would be held during the festival "Golden Apricot", 30 thousand dollars. This was reported at the press conference on July 8 by Arutyun Khachatryan, the festival's director.

According to him, the programme, relevant to showing films from the CIS countries, is a new, but very important one, because the audience will have an opportunity to watch the films of the post-Soviet countries.

The festival will be attended by Fanny Ardant, the famous French actress, filmmaker and public activist. This year together with the film showings the anniversary events dedicated to the 70th birthday of Roman Balayan, the 75th birthday of Edmond Keosayan and the 80th birthday of Dmitry Keosayan, will be held.

Susanna Arutyunyan, the festival's art director, noted that earlier representatives of the CIS countries had not actively participated in the international film festival "Golden Apricot" because of financial difficulties.

"Air tickets from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan are more expensive than those from China. However, thanks to the support of the "CIS Fund", this year we were able to activate this very important direction also," said Ms Arutyunyan.

"This film festival was an important event due to the sequence and relationships of its organizers. I believe we managed to take a regional niche of film festivals. Thanks to the "Golden Apricot", people will get to know Armenia better. This film festival is the way to introduce our country to the world," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Susanna Arutyunyan.