The three-day festival will feature over a dozen of motion pictures, documentaries and even animations. They will compete for a single prize to be awarded by an amateur Armenian jury.
According to the organizer of the event, the Yerevan-based Caucasus Center for Peace Initiatives (CCPR), ordinary viewers’ opinion will be the main criterion in the selection of the winner.
The CCPR already held such a festival a year ago. Its chairman, Georgi Vanian, said on Wednesday that Turkish filmmakers’ interest in the initiative has sharply increased since then.
“We had only one application from Turkey for the first festival,” Vanian told RFE/RL. “We obtained all other films included in the competition from the archives of local and international festivals taking place in Turkey.”
“This year, we received 77 film applications before the submission deadline,” he said. The purpose of the festival, sponsored by the British Embassy in Armenian, is to give Armenian society a better idea of modern-day Turkey, added Vanian.
The CCPR held a similar festival of Azerbaijani movies in the Armenian capital last October. The civic group was also the organizer of “days of Azerbaijan” at a Yerevan public school in December 2007.