The Mall, London
Tue 8 Sept · 18:30
Armenian Film Society London presents the UK premiere of In the Land of Arto (2025), the debut fiction by Tamara Stepanyan, as part of Jukebox Film Club. Céline travels to Armenia in search of traces of her recently deceased husband, Arto. When no record of him can be found in the archives, she sets out on a journey through a land scarred by war. Along the way, the truth gradually emerges through the testimonies of Arto’s former fellow soldiers: the memory of a deserter who jeopardised his own combat unit before assuming a new identity to flee Armenia during the Nagorno-Karabakh war of the 1990s. But did she ever really know her husband at all? The past year has been especially fruitful for French-Armenian filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan. Her documentary essay My Armenian Phantoms (2025) premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival, while In the Land of Arto opened the prestigious Locarno Film Festival at the Piazza Grande. The former received its UK premiere at the Armenian Film Festival London, while the latter arrives at the Institute of Contemporary Arts this September. In the Land of Arto uses the structure of a travelogue to confront the painful legacy of the Nagorno-Karabakh wars, a conflict that continues to overshadow the modern history of Armenia and echoes the unresolved trauma of the early-20th-century Armenian Genocide. Framed as a road movie, the film follows two women — one French, the other Armenian, though portrayed by a French-Iranian actress — as they journey across the Armenian Highlands in search of the roots of tragedy, betrayal, and displaced identity. The screening is organised in collaboration with Iranian Film Club and will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the filmmaker hosted by Kira Adibekov (AFSL).
Not the same tradition as the lineage above — a genuinely different thread to pull, if you want one.