Don’t Look into the Mirror

Colour, 35 mm
Armenia, 2009, 101 min
EP – European premiere
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

What is left for an aging, none-too-attractive man whose artistic ambitions faded long ago? The past, once so full of hope, is only a boozy memory of bohemian friends who don’t take him any more seriously than he does himself. Is there any way that he can change his life? Fate, of course, decides for him: one day while looking in the mirror he sees a completely different man, one who does what he wants and indiscriminately meddles in the protagonist’s life. And what’s worse, there are multiple, willful mirror doubles. The hero’s life changes into a succession of bizarre, comic and tragic episodes. To be sure, the dialogue with his own past, with his conscience, and with his hopes for the future presupposes that one day he will step outside the mirror’s frame. And who is actually outside and who is inside the frame anyway? Director Suren Babayan based his visually rich, surreal movie on the novel by Perch Zeituntsyan as an original variation on the classic tale of the mirror double.

About the director

Suren Babayan (b. 1950, Yerevan, Armenia), screenwriter and director, graduated in theater direction from the Yerevan State Institute of Cinema and Theater, and in film direction from the Higher Courses at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), Nikita Mikhalkov’s master class. He sparked interest with his debut The Cry of a Peacock (Siramargi tchiche, 1982), co-directed by Mikael Dovlatyan. In 1987 he debuted on his own with the fantasy film The Thirteenth Disciple, based on Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Other films: the feature drama Blood (Aryun, 1990), the short P.S. (1993), the surreal story Crazy Angel (Khent hreshtak, 2000), based on the novel Barabbas by Swedish Nobel Prize winner Pär Lagerkvist, and the drama Jeano (2004). In 1990 he wrote the script for Dovlatyan’s crime mystery Facing the Wall (Demqov depi pate, 1990).