My Sweet Land (Տունս քաղցր ա)
Date: Friday, July 25
Screening Time: 6 pm
Directed by Sareen Hairabedian
Production: •USA, France, Ireland, Jordan
Production year: 2024
Duration: 86 minutes
Genre: Documentary
Languages: Armenian with English subtitles
Cast: rej Khachatryan & Family
Music: Tigran Hamasyan
Synopsis
My Sweet Land is a coming-of-age story set against a multigenerational war in the post-Soviet Caucasus Mountains. It follows an 11-year-old boy named Vrej, growing up in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) who dreams of becoming a dentist in his picture-postcard village with its roaming ducks and golden bees. Vrej’s life takes a sudden turn when war erupts, forcing him to flee with his family. He spends his days in exile impatiently waiting for victory, but reality takes a different turn.
TRAILER:: My Sweet Land
Festivals & Awards
International Documentary Association Awards: Shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature Nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Original Music Score
Amman International Film Festival: Jury Award for Best Arab Documentary - Audience Award - FIPRESCI Award This Human World Film Festival: Up & Coming Competition Jury Award
Sheffield DocFest 2024: World Premiere - Official Selection International First Feature Competition DOC NYC: North American Premiere - Official Selection U.S. Competition
Golden Apricot Film Festival, Bergen International Film Festival, Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival, Carthage International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, FIPADOC International Film Festival.
"It’s a haunting, beautiful film that lingers long after the final frame.
“The notion of “homeland” in a globalised world might sound outdated, but only to those who have voluntarily chosen a vagabond’s life. For the ones who have lost the privilege to choose where to live, and especially to stay in the place they were born, the concept of a native land has taken on the hyperbolised dimensions of a dream.”
– Cineuropa
Press
– Variety
– Deadline
– Cinerama
A Man of Integrity (Lerd)
Date: Saturday, July 26
Screening Time: 6 pm
Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
Production: Iran
Production year: 2017
Duration: 117 minutes
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Languages: Farsi with English subtitles
Main Cast: Reza Akhlaghirad Soudabeh Beizaee Nasim Adabi Misagh Zare Zeinab Shabani Zhila Shahi
Music: Peyman Yazdanian
Synopsis
Reza, leads a simple life along with his wife and young son, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working on his goldfish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of regional life. Its shareholders, accumulating wealth, power and economic influence, have been pushing local farmers and small owners to sell off their belongings, farms and estates, to the benefit of the Company’s influential network and its monopoly. It is under their pressure that many villagers have themselves become local links in the larger network of corruption.
Director Mohammed Rasoulof’s film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2025 Oscar
TRAILER: A MAN OF INTEGRITY
Festivals & Awards
70th Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard Prize: Best film
The 17th Asia Pacific Screen Awards: nominated for Best Feature Film
Chicago International Film Festival: Nominated for 2017 Golden Hugo Award: Best Feature & winner of Silver Hugo Best Screenplay
Hamburg Film Festival nominee for 2017 Critics Award
2017 Ghent International Film Festival, nominee for Grand Prix, best Film
Jerusalem Film Festival, Winner of 2017 The Wilf Family Foundation Award-Honorable Mention
2017 Golden Apricot Yerevan Intentional Film Festival, Winner of FIPRESCI PRIZE
International Film Festival of India, 2017 nominated for Golden Peacock Award: Best Film
Hamburg Film Festival, 2017 nominee for Critics Award
Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Winner of 2017 Best Director
“Rasoulof’s realism is radical in the literal sense: he exposes the root of Iranian society and reveals its founding premise to be the all-pervasive source of injustice and corruption. “A Man of Integrity” is both a work of political defiance and of artistic audacity.”
– The New Yorker
"A satisfyingly gritty addition to Iran's tradition of humanist cinema."
-Screen International