France-based Armenia-born filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan just opened the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival with In the Land of Arto , which stars Camille Cottin and Zar Amir and explores the collective trauma of Armenians. A different kind of trauma, that of domestic violence, will be the focus of her next film, the creative tells THR .

Since making a fiction short about 15 years ago, the filmmaker has made a name for herself with such documentaries as Embers and My Armenian Phantoms . Asked about the type of movie she will work on next, she says: “For me, cinema is cinema. There’s a very thin line for me between documentary and fiction – I mean fiction the way I see it. One nourishes the other, one is inspired by the other. I love both immensely, and I’m sure I will

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