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13th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival press conference took place on 22 June. According to the press release issued by the festival website,   international competition programs and the international jury boards of 2016 were announced. Out of 900 submissions, 43 films will be competing in the three main competition sections: International Feature Competition (12 films), International Documentary Competition (15 films) and Armenian Panorama National Competition (16 films).The geography of the competing films includes 37 countries, the source details.

Golden Apricot IFF Program Director Mikayel Stamboltsyan stressed that the selection of the films for the International Feature Competition was quite difficult due to the high number of quality films.
“We often had fiery debates in our committee which consisted of people of different generations. That was natural we had a clash of tastes,” Stamboltsyan noted.

To his words, interesting films by women directors are also submitted to the festival “A new trend is observed in the global cinematography; women directors have started producing interesting works,” Stamboltsyan said, adding that regional films were as well encouraged to be included in the program of the festival.

Ara Khanjyan, Deputy Director at Golden Apricot IFF Program mentioned that films submitted for International Documentary Competition left a saddening impression upon him. To him, documentaries are approaching the features in their content. 

“We selected the best what we saw out of the screened films. Some of the films have good record of accomplishments, others are to be screened for the first time,” he said, adding the fans of documentaries should be impressed by the program.

To note, 13th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival will be held on July 10-17. The festival is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Armenia’s independence.