'Le pays d'Arto', Locarno Film Festival opens under the sign of committed cinema
Opening the 78th edition of the Swiss event was Tamara Stepanyan's first fiction work with a rich cast
2' min read
2' min read
Civil commitment was the great protagonist of the inauguration of the Locarno Film Festival 2025: "Le pays d'Arto", the first film of this edition to be screened in the magical setting of the Piazza Grande, is a film with an evident political scope, symbol of a kermesse that loves to privilege strong content within its programme.
The first work of fiction by director Tamara Stepanyan, the film stars Céline, a French woman who arrives in Armenia to make official the death of her husband Arto and retrieve his birth documents so that her two children can also have a second nationality.
Very soon, however, Céline discovers that her husband has been lying to her the whole time they have been together: the man has fought in the war, assumed another identity and is considered a deserter. Travelling into Arto's past, Céline meets veterans and veterans from the 1990s, figures haunted by a battle that never ends.
"I no longer live in Armenia, but it is a country that haunts me like an amputated arm, that lives inside me like a ghost. Why do I return there so often, why this immense desire to shoot there? What drives me is anxiety and questions': with these words, the director wanted to accompany her film, a product that is certainly the child of strongly personal questions and reflections.
It is no coincidence that Tamara Stepanyan's previous work, presented in the Forum Special section of the last Berlinale, was a documentary with a particularly emblematic title, 'My Armenian Phantoms'.
