29° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
TFLAB
I'M GOING TO CHANGE MY NAME a.k.a. ALAVERDY (Work in Progress)
by Maria Saakyan
Year: 2011
Duration: 137'
Evridika is a young girl who lives with her mother Sona in a small apartment between the river and the railway. A sort of ghost town in the heart of Armenia. While her mother is on tour with the quire directed by his partner, Evridika is often left alone to take care of herself. Her deepest dream is to change name and become a new person. Hence she makes up an imaginary universe in which a prince is waiting for her. Only when Piotr, an old lover of Sona’s, appears the girl’s dreams and hopes will change into something different. “This story starts with my own feeling of being lost. One day, I realised that I didn’t even feel alive any more. And so I did the only thing that teenagers habitually do when they feel like this – I tried to hurt myself. I invented a story, a story out of my fears and pain, and it was like in the famous song, Hurt, performed also by Johnny Cash: ‘I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel, I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.’”
Biography
film director
Maria Saakyan
Maria Saakyan (Yerevan, Armenia, 1980) in 1992 moved to Russia with her family. In 1996 she got into the Vgik school of direction and animation, where she worked with Vladimir Korbin. In 2003 she graduated with The Farewell, awarded the Rotterdam and Telluride festivals. Her first full-length movie, The Lighthouse, was presented at the Festivals in Rotterdam, London, San Paulo and Pesaro. In 2010 together with Victoria Lupik she founded Anniko Films Productions. Finally thanks to I’m Going to Change My Name, produced with the kind contribution of TorinoFilmLab, she got selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus.
FILMOGRAFIA
Lullaby (cm, 1999), The Game (cm, 2000), Proshanie (The Farewell, cm, 2003), Mayak (The Lighthouse, 2007), I’m Going to Change My Name a.k.a. Alaverdy (Work in Progress), (2011).
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura/director, screenplay
Maria Saakyan
fotografia/cinematography
Mkrtich «Mko» Malkhasyan
scenografia/production design
Victoria Lamshina
costumi/costume design
Ivana Krcadinac
suono/sound
Alexander Simeonov
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Evgeny Tsyganov (Piotr), Arina Adju (Evridika), Maria Aplas-Popova (Sona)
produttori/producers
Gevorg Gevorkyan, Gevorg Nersisyan, Victoria Lupik
produzione/production
Anniko Films, Paradise Groupe, National Film Centre of Armenia
vendita all’estero/world sales
Anniko Films
