France-based Armenia-born filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan just opened the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival with In the Land of Arto, which stars Camille Cottin and Zar Amir and explores the collective trauma of Armenians. A different kind of trauma, that of domestic violence, will be the focus of her next film, the creative tells THR.
Since making a fiction short about 15 years ago, the filmmaker has made a name for herself with such documentaries as Embers and My Armenian Phantoms. Asked about the type of movie she will work on next, she says: “For me, cinema is cinema. There’s a very thin line for me between documentary and fiction – I mean fiction the way I see it. One nourishes the other, one is inspired by the other. I love both immensely, and I’m sure I will continue doing both in parallel.”
And she is. “I already have an idea for a fiction film that I would like to work on with one of my core co-writers of Arto,” Stepanyan shares. “Her name is Romy [Coccia di Ferro]. I want to write with her about Armenia again.” But “it’s too early” to discuss topics and themes, she tells THR.
She already filmed a documentary two years ago, though, which she plans to start editing in January. “I shot it in a place called Maison des Femmes, House of Women or House for Women, on the outskirts of Paris in St. Denis,” Stepanyan explains. “This place welcomes women who have gone through domestic violence and have traumas, including mutilation and rape. This beautiful place treats traumas through workshops, such as photography yoga, and dance. And I followed three workshops over a year – oriental dance, jewelry, and theater. So, again, it’s about trauma, but another kind of trauma.”
Concludes Stepanyan: “It’s a film about healing, about these women becoming the ones who decide what their lives are like, the ones who control their destiny, the ones who repair and hopefully find courage to continue life without toxic men around them.”
Stepanyan approached the women while dealing with her own trauma. “I was going through cancer, and I was feeling that my body was violated by sickness, while their bodies were violated by men – fathers, uncles, husbands, boyfriends,” she shares. “All my projects are very personal. I cannot just talk about something that I don’t care about. Domestic violence is one of the most horrible problems of modern life that is still going on. It is not the same, but I felt very close to the women, because I was fighting my cancer, they were fighting their cancer, which was the man, the violator.”
Concludes Stepanyan: “So, it’s a diary film, a kind of diary of mine where I go and spend the day with the women. It’s a personal diary-oriented film about healing trauma.”