My Armenian Phantoms
Tamara Stepanyan / FR, AM, QA, 2025 / 75 min.
Tamara Stepanyan enters into a dialogue with the spirit of her father, a celebrated Armenian actor. Through film excerpts and from her own perspective, she sketches the history of her family and of a complex, resilient country.
Stepanyan thought she still had plenty of time to discuss life’s important questions with her father. After his sudden death in 2020, she sought this connection in the many films of him that remain. Vigen Stepanyan was a celebrated stage and film actor, especially during the era of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
After Armenia regained independence in 1991, the Stepanyan family moved to Lebanon, where Tamara grew up and became a filmmaker. Now she returns to her birthplace and immerses herself in the Armenian film archives, rich with footage that shaped her father, herself and her country.
Drawing on Armenian film classics, documentaries and home videos, she tells the story of a complex and resilient land with a turbulent history: genocide, earthquakes and annexation by the Soviet Union. The poetic sequence of archival material is accompanied by the dialogue Tamara holds with her father’s spirit about historical events, his legacy, their bond, her future, the role of women in the film industry and what it means to be Armenian.
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Details
Director
Tamara Stepanyan
Production year
2025
Country
FR, AM, QA
Length
75 min.
Language
English
Subtitles
NONE
Format
DCP
Part of
IDFA 2025
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is once again bringing an exciting selection of the world’s best documentaries to Eye this year, from 13 through 23 November.
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