My Armenian Phantoms

Personal memories of her deceased father, the well-known actor Vigen Stepanyan, are combined with a cinematic search for traces through the history of Soviet/Armenian cinema. As a child, Tamara Stepanyan sees him in films, flickering on the television screen in the living room - the beginning of a lifelong dialog with him and the "ghosts" of her family history.

Growing up in a family of artists in the last years of the Soviet Union and later in exile in Lebanon, she uses filmic fragments - from Paradzhanov to Peleshyan - to approach her own path as a woman, artist and director. The multi-layered montage of family footage, archive images and iconic film scenes creates a poetic ritual of remembrance that links the private and the political, loss and cinematic utopia.

Director: Tamara Stepanyan
78 min, France/Armenia/Qatar 2025, OmeU

Followed by: Talk with the director Tamara Stepanyan in English

Moderation, text, organization and research:
Isabel Beisiegel, Alex Knut, Anahita Islas Djafari and Delfi Mancini

The screening is the result of a cooperation project with the goEast Film Festival. Students from Cologne attended the festival and are now bringing two films to the screen at Filmhaus Köln.