Greeting Apricot Tree Debed IFF

Dear friends!

I warmly welcome you to this comfy Armenian village․

I am confident that the few days you will spend in Debed will leave a good and fruitful trace in your hearts. We will all enrich ourselves with new meetings and impressions, and all of that will have a small, but nonetheless beneficial effect on our further professional activities.

Living in villagers’ families, you will get a unique opportunity to directly get acquainted with the life, customs, and character of an Armenian. Filmmakers from 10 countries are here for the festival. Compact living in a small village will allow all participants to communicate intensively both among themselves and with Armenian colleagues. New contacts will be made, mutual projects will be born.

For the residents of Debet and surrounding villages, our festival is a huge cultural event. For 8 days, on the big screen, they will witness the thoughts, hopes, problems, joys, and sorrows of people from different countries and continents, and of course, that unique worldview that each of you attempted to convey through your film.

The jury of the festival will determine and award the winners, but each of you has already won because you are here because your films were selected from hundreds of submissions.

Therefore, by welcoming you, I am also congratulating you on your victory. Let us consider our festival a celebration of winners.

Congratulations!

Happy “Apricot Tree” celebration!

Garegin Zakoyan
Apricot Tree Debed IFF Director
Filmadaran NGO president