Braden King's feature film, HERE, was premiered in Yerevan's Moscow Cinema on Tuesday. The American movie filmed in Armenia and Karabakh, was included into competition program of Sundance 2011 film festival. Armenian actors involved in the film were present at the premiere.
Before the presentation, Braden King said that the film is a romantic road-trip drama which describes the long journey of his team.
"My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like," Francis Ford Coppola said in 1979 when speaking about his film. Now I say that HERE is not a road movie romance about Armenia but it is the road itself," said the film director.
In the film, King pays special attention to the historical monuments in Armenia and Artsakh and Armenian lifestyle.
The Armenian audience did not accept unanimously the film. Some were even insulted by King's description.
"We are a civilized nation, while King presents us as a backward and corrupt Asian tribe," said one of the spectators.
The film stars Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal (who stars in Canada's Best Foreign Film Oscar contender "Incendies") as Will and Gadarine, two photographers who meet by chance in Armenia and decide to continue on their journey together, forging an instant bond. The film is not just a love story on the road as the ambitious production also boasts five interludes, helmed by five different directors (including King), that blur the line between film and documentary, movie and dream. In all, it weaves a lovely, dreamlike tapestry around a tale of solitary people who temporarily find a deep connection.
