By Sara Khojoyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
This year for the 12th time Yerevan will host a Golden Apricot International Film Festival, which will take place from July 12 to 19.
The main program of the festival, besides the traditional four nominations, will be full of extra-competition nominations; two of them on the topic of the Genocide.
Films telling about the Armenian Genocide will be represented in the nomination We Exist, and works telling about genocides in the world – in the nomination Never Again, Mikayel Stambultsyan, program manager of the festival, told reporters.
“We have two big good projects: New French Film and New German Film, which are quite abundant and new names will be presented,” Stambultsyan said.
The festival this year will be special considering the cooperation with the project Film Directors Without Limits, which is held together with the Ministry of Culture; it will host Ministers and Deputy Ministers of Culture from other countries, Armenian Deputy Minister of Culture Artur Poghosyan said.
“Golden Apricot is the International Festival which has become a symbol of our culture during these years,” he said adding that the Festival is the most well-known and the most popular visit-card of the Armenian culture in the world.
The annually increasing number of application for participation in the festival is a proof to this. This year the organizers of the festival received 1,600 applications from 105 countries (in 2014 1500 applications from 95 countries were received).
“Annually the number of presented films and participating countries increases. This year we received applications from African and Latin American countries,” Syuzanna Harutyunyan, the artistic director of the festival said.
“Film artists from the whole world send applications and express desire to come and participate, recognize Armenia, get to know to Armenian film and present their films here,” she added.