10th Golden Apricot Yerevan
International Film Festival
 July 7-14, 2013

Festival Website

AWARDS OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY

The Ecumenical Jury at the 10th Annual Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival has selected for this year's Ecumenical Award the film

Keep Smiling
directed by Rusudan Chkonia, Georgia/France, 2012

This film is an artful and profound critique of the rising popularity of reality television programming and highlights the humiliation and loss of human dignity that often casts a dark shadow upon the participants in these programs. The audience journeys through a wide range of  human emotions as we engage with these ten mothers as they compete for the top prize in this beauty contest for Georgian mothers. Shame and greed join envy and lust in illustrating that there are sometimes tragic consequences to pay for pursuing artificial human validation and for taking advantage of the disadvantaged for purposes of entertainment.

The jury has also given a Commendation to

Eastalgia
directed by Daria Onyshchenko, Germany/Ukraine/Serbia, 2012

for its excellent and dramatic depiction of the emotional devastation left in the wake caused by economic migration of three torn, yet interconnected, families living in the modern Ukraine, Serbia, and Germany.

The members of the Ecumenical Jury were Douglas Fahleson (Ireland), Rev. Heinz-Martin Krauss (Germany), and Bishop Gevorg Saroyan (Armenia).