It's a mystery to me why this film is not better known. If the director hadn't died so young, perhaps her continuing career would have brought it the attention it deserves. Highly compressed depiction of life under war in the Caucasus, eighty minutes and never a dull shot, slender story is filled out with poetic imagery and a vivid sense of enduring life.
Keywords: woman director
Plot summary
In the 90s, Lena returns to the home of her grandparents in a tiny, war-torn village in Armenia. Lena begs them to follow her lead and retreat to the safety of Moscow. They are hesitant to leave and as Lena stays to aid them in the rebuilding process, she finds herself being drawn back into the familiarity of the surroundings that she once chose to leave behind.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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Forgotten masterpiece?
Just released by Second Run including Saakyan's short film "Farewell".
The kind of film you give the backhanded compliment "Shows promise." The director was young, it's her first film, and if she dropped the show-offy (Art Film 101) stuff and found something she really needed to say - there's certainly a powerful film to be made from the conflicts in the Caucasus that followed in the wake of the Soviet collapse, but this isn't it - she might amount to something.
Powerful And Imaginative: A Cinematic Genius
Mayak is the first feature film directed by a woman in Armenia, since the birth of Armenian cinema in the early 1920 It's a combination of anti-war ideas and semi-autobiographical material, fixated with haunting score and poetic cinematography, with the latter made more explicit in this brilliant film. The movie feels authentic, doesn't try to force emotions unlike other war films. I loved this film on three or four levels, including the beautiful use of metaphor and political allegory, the brilliant acting, and perhaps most importantly, the photography and the images which cause strong emotional reactions in the mind. Essential viewing for the fans of Emir Kusturica, Georgiy Daneliya, Andrei Tarkovsky, Larisa Shepitko and Frantisek Vlácil.