‘Mayak (The Lighthouse) – Maria Saakyan’

Lena, a young woman from Moscow, returns to the small town in North Armenia where she was born. Then war breaks out. She wants to rescue her grandmother and grandfather from the town, but having arrived at their place she realizes there is no way out; no way back to Moscow. Lena has to learn to live with war. An intensely poetic film, The Lighthouse was the first feature film to be completed by a woman in Armenia since the inception of their film industry in the early 1920s. Featuring a multi-ethnic cast and crew, the film remains progressive both in terms of aesthetic and outlook.

Maria Saakyan (1980, Armenia – 2018, Russia) moved from Armenia to Russia at the age of 12. She studied in Russia from 1997 to 2003 at the Russian State Institute for Cinematography (VGIK) where she made short animation and experimental films. The Lighthouse (2006) was her first feature. After her debut she made I'm Going to Change My Name (2012) and Entropiya (2013). In 2018 Saakyan passed away at the age of 37.