The Currents Wins Golden Apricot as Iranian Cinema Takes Major Awards in Yerevan
Yerevan, 12-19 July 2026 | Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents received the festival’s international prize, while Past Future Continuous and Inside Amir brought two major awards to Iranian filmmakers.
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The 23rd Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival closed on 19 July, bringing a week of screenings and industry programmes to an end with awards across its international, regional and short film competitions.
Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents received the Golden Apricot in the International Full-Length Competition. The Switzerland-Argentina production centres on Lina, a 34-year-old Argentine stylist whose stable professional and personal life begins to shift after an award ceremony in Switzerland.
She returns to Buenos Aires without explaining what happened. As memories begin to reappear, the film moves through the quieter consequences of an experience Lina is unable, or unwilling, to put into words.
Iranian filmmakers Firouzeh Khosrovani and Morteza Ahmadvand received the Silver Apricot for Past Future Continuous, a documentary shaped by the distance between an exiled daughter and her ageing parents.
Maryam left Iran at the age of 20 after the 1979 revolution and has lived in the United States for many years. Yet the country she left behind remains present through family memories and her continued relationship with her parents in Tehran.
Cameras installed inside their home allow Maryam to observe their daily routines and stay close to them from another continent. The house becomes a shared space between Tehran and the United States, although internet shutdowns, the passage of time and her parents’ declining health repeatedly expose the limits of this connection.
Produced between Iran, Norway and Italy, the documentary uses technology not as a simple solution to separation, but as part of a complicated family relationship shaped by exile and ageing.
The international jury gave its Special Mention to London by Austrian director Sebastian Brameshuber. Despite its title, much of the film unfolds on the motorway between Vienna and Salzburg, where Bobby picks up strangers to share the cost of fuel.
Their conversations about employment, migration and family gradually form a portrait of contemporary European life. Brameshuber combines documentary encounters with constructed situations, leaving the boundary between observation and performance deliberately open.
Inside Amir Wins Golden Apricot in Regional Competition
Iranian cinema also led the Regional Competition, where Amir Azizi’s Inside Amir received the Golden Apricot.
Set in Tehran, the film observes a young man during the final days before his planned departure from Iran. Amir moves through the city by bicycle, meeting friends and revisiting familiar places as his decision to leave becomes increasingly real.
Rather than building the story around a single dramatic farewell, Azizi focuses on unfinished conversations, ordinary meetings and the emotional weight of separation. He wrote, directed and edited the film, with Amirhossein Hoseini in the central role.
Produced by Fog Films, Inside Amir previously appeared at Giornate degli Autori, the independent section held alongside the Venice Film Festival, where it received the GdA Director’s Award in 2025.
The Regional Competition’s Silver Apricot went to Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze for Dry Leaf. The film also received the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics.
Its story begins with the disappearance of Lisa, a photographer who had been documenting football fields in remote Georgian villages. She leaves a letter asking her parents not to search for her, but her father, Irakli, decides to retrace the route of her unfinished project.
He travels with Lisa’s friend Levani, an invisible presence in the film. Their movement across Georgia becomes less a conventional investigation than a journey through rural communities, landscapes and local football culture.
The double recognition for Dry Leaf placed Koberidze’s film among the most awarded works of the festival’s regional programme.
Armenian Shorts Receive Apricot Stone Awards
The Apricot Stone Competition, Golden Apricot’s section for short films, gave its main award to Dialogues Solitaires by Serouj Hovsepian. The France-Armenia production also received the Gennadi Melkonian Special Prize.
Set over one night in Paris, the film follows Aren as he considers telling his friend Van that he is in love with him. An encounter with a former lover brings older emotions back into the present and complicates his understanding of intimacy.
The Silver Apricot was awarded to Paid Mourners by Armenian writer-director Ovsanna Gevorgyan.
At the centre of the film is a family tradition carried by generations of women who work as professional mourners. Sixteen-year-old Margo, more interested in building an audience on TikTok, refuses to accept the role prepared for her.
Her grandmother’s announcement that she has only one week to live turns this disagreement into a confrontation between inheritance, performance and a younger generation’s desire to choose a different future.
The jury also gave Special Mentions to Sona Khachatryan’s Relic and Arthur Sahakyan’s Together Alone.
Relic centres on Minas, a blind 10-year-old boy whose supposed healing abilities lead to fear and rejection within his village. Together Alone looks back at the nearly five decades that Ofelya spent in isolation with her husband Shura, using their home and belongings as traces of a shared life.
Slovak filmmaker Tereza Nvotova’s Father received the Award for Distribution in Armenia and Georgia, supported by EUR 6,000. The drama examines the aftermath of a father’s tragic mistake and the pressure it places on his family, marriage and sense of responsibility.
Mahmoud Kalari Honoured With the Parajanov Thaler
The closing ceremony also recognised Iranian cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari with the Parajanov Thaler for his career and contribution to cinematography.
Kalari served as president of the Regional Competition jury during this year’s festival. Across a career of more than four decades, he has worked on over 60 films, including Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Jafar Panahi’s Offside, Dariush Mehrjui’s Leila and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us.
The Parajanov Thaler takes its name from the aluminium coins Sergei Parajanov made from milk-bottle lids while he was in prison. Golden Apricot presents a silver replica of one of these coins to artists recognised for their contribution to cinema.
Armenian-American producer Sev Ohanian also received the festival’s Master Award.
Golden Apricot 2026 concluded with a screening of Once Within a Time by American filmmaker Godfrey Reggio.
I would like to thank the entire Golden Apricot team for their work and effort in bringing this year’s festival together. It was a pleasure to be in Yerevan, follow the programme closely, and meet filmmakers and cinema professionals from Armenia and beyond.
- Abbas Souzian, Yerevan
- Photo credits: Mojtaba Mortazavi