Guests: Award-winning filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist, and curator Emily Mkrtichian, and acclaimed filmmaker and director Hasmik Movsisyan.
In this episode, our guests reflect on how their connections to Armenia have shifted over time, and how film becomes a way of holding onto and passing down memory. They discuss how storytelling has the power to reach people in ways that feel both personal and universal, transcending the boundaries of any singular identity. Along the way, they consider how culture is carried forward, and what it means, as filmmakers, to take on the responsibility of preserving and sharing those stories.
Biographies:
Emily Mkrtichian is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores alternative archives and visionary futures across the SWANA region. Working across documentary, fiction, and expanded media, her practice is grounded in collaborative ethics and care-centered methodologies. Her feature documentary There Was, There Was Not premiered at True/False Film Festival and went on to screen internationally, earning the Audience Award and Special Mention at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI Prize at the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, and a North American release with Watermelon Pictures. Her earlier work has screened at festivals including Full Frame and BFI Flare. Mkrtichian has been recognized as a Creative Capital awardee (2025), an LA Arts Activation Fund recipient, and a DocX Fellow at Duke University and is an alum of the Sundance Institute Mkrtichian’s projects center diasporic memory, intergenerational storytelling, and collective world-building. She is also a curator, educator, and facilitator.
Hasmik Movsisyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1991. At the age of 11, she moved with her family to St. Petersburg, Russia, where she grew up. She received a
medical degree from St. Petersburg State University, but after graduation, she decided to pursue her true passion for filmmaking. Hasmik was accepted into the Directing Department of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where she studied under the guidance of Alexander and Vladimir Kott and Anna Fenchenko in the fiction film workshop. During her time at VGIK, Hasmik’s films (Apnea 2019, Side by Side 2021, Harisa 2022) were recognized at various student film festivals and received numerous awards. Her short film 250 KM, which originally began as a student project, developed into a full-fledged independent film and went on to participate in more than 40 international film festivals, earning around 20 awards. In 2025, Hasmik completed her Master’s degree in Film Directing at ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya) in Spain, where she wrote and directed her first European short film, Barceloneta.
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