Director Jivan Avetisyan Hopes to Get Community Involved in the Making of His Next Film About Artsakh ‘Gate to Heaven’

YEREVAN (A.W.)—Artsakh-Armenian director Jivan Avetisyan recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming film about the April 2016 War in Artsakh, “Gate to Heaven.”

Known for his award-winning films “Tevanik” and “The Last Inhabitant”—the Eastern European distribution rights of which were recently acquired by HBO—Avetisyan’s latest film will star Tatiana Spivakova, Sos Janibejyan, and Naira Zakaryan.

The film centers around Robert Stenvall, a European journalist, who returns to Artsakh in 2016 to cover the war, which resumed after a shaky 22-year-ceasefire. During his time in Artsakh, Stenvall meets Sophia Martirosyan a young Opera singer and daughter of the missing photojournalist Edgar Martirosyan whom Robert left behind in captivity in the village during the fall of Talish in 1992.

“‘Gate to Heaven’ tells the truth about God’s mighty power and how each and every one of us is led to our unique doors,” Avetisyan said abou the in a press statement. “And once that very door opens, we become tolerant or evil, kind or brutal, a liar, a thief or the ones that let in the truth with all its colors.”

Avetisyan was born in Gyumri and grew up in Stepanakert. Between 1999 and 2001 he served in the Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) Defense Army. In 2007, he graduated with a degree in feature film at the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography in the faculty of Feature Films. Until 2009, he served as the director of films and TV programing at Yerevan’s Yerkir Media TV company. From 2009 to 2014 he served as chief director at Yerkir Media. Since 2014 he has been the director of the Fish eye Art Cultural Foundation.

More than $11,000 (USD) of a targeted $53,000 has been collected in the first three days since the launch of the film’s crowdfunding campaign on the popular Indiegogo platform. Speaking to the Armenian Weekly last week, Avetisyan said that though the film’s budget is much higher than the crowdfunding target (close to $400,000 USD), he felt it was important to get the community—especially the worldwide Armenian Diaspora—directly involved with the project. “This is our [Armenians’] story and now you can all be a part of telling it to the world,” Avetisyan said about the film. Shooting for “Gate to Heaven” is scheduled to begin in August and Avetisyan hopes to have it ready for festivals premieres in Feb. 2019.

To learn more about the upcoming film and to back the project, click here.