HOT COUNTRY, COLD WINTER

Studio DS production
Country of production: Armenia
Countries of co-production: The Netherlands, Germany, Russia
Running Time: 105 minutes
shot on 35mm Fuji colour negative film
Film Dialogues: Armenian/Russian (with English subtitles)
Available Formats: DCP, 35mm film print (original version without subtitles)
Sound: Digital 5.1

Synopsis

”A little piece of land? A whole country? A little group of people or a whole nation? What are they waiting for? Is their queue endless?” Do not expect to get all the answers.

A tale of a man and a woman suffering the circumstances of a total energy crisis. Their recollections, short narratives, imagination act as aids in understanding of the story, and in understanding that core human values are shared throughout the world.

Director’s Statement

Film is a fairy tale.
Filmmaker is a taleteller.

About the Director’s Statement

Reminiscences will involuntarily and randomly come up from the depth of your memory. Sometimes you will coax them out yourself, but you will never be able to stop them burbling up by saying:
"I don't want to remember." (My grandfather's parting words)

I was very young when I was the first time asked about the director's statement. And I answered almost without hesitation, as if I shot: "Cinema is a fairy tale, filmmaker is a tale-teller." The expression was liked. It started frequently appearing the next to my name or the titles of my films. But the time passed, and the expression dissolved in time. It stopped to be used, also by me. Recently, after viewing HOT COUNTRY, COLD WINTER a famous film critic turned to me and said:
“I like very much the way you start your film: with two quotations, with parting words of your grandfather. This speaks quite a bit about your statement but… anyway, if you’ll be straightly asked about the director’s statement, what will be your answer? Thinking a bit, I said: "Cinema is a fairy tale, filmmaker is a tale-teller." To my surprise, he remembered my long-standing expression, and wondered: "Do you still think the same way? Really, nothing has been changed for you?"

My attitude to the cinema and to the profession is not changing.
My understanding of the fairy tale is changed.

Back to HOT COUNTRY, COLD WINTER. It is a fairy tale. Moreover, the very birth of this film is a kind of a fairy tale, perhaps, another kind than one to be narrated to the child before bedtime.
All around the HOT COUNTRY, COLD WINTER is fantastic. But not the main credit itself: in this case we are dealing with absurd, with the absurdity of hard times. Also the destiny of my film is like a classical hard destiny of a fairy tale character with all its transformations. And after all which happened on its long way of production the end product appears very close to what was planned,
to its first version. That’s important.