IN THE LAND OF ARTO: East Coast premiere @ Belmont World Film's 24th International Film Series

East Coast premiere | Directed by Tamara Stepanyan
104 mins. | Armenia, France | Armenian, French with subtitles | 2025

Belmont World Film's 24th International Film Series, "Thicker than water," explores the ties that bind—and sometimes limit us— through an intimate and far-reaching collection of stories about families in all their complexity. Across cultures and continents, these films ask what we inherit, what we carry, and what we owe one another.

The series unfolds over eight consecutive Mondays through May 18 at the West Newton Cinema, at 7:00 PM. After a two-week break, the series returns on June 1 with three additional remarkable films in recognition of World Refugee Awareness Month and Pride Month.

All of the selections were official entries at the world’s major film festivals, with several receiving top honors.

In In the Land of Arto Camille Cottin (Call My Agent, House of Gucci) stars as a wife who travels to Armenia to legalize her husband's death, only to learn that he lied about his military service, that he fought in the war, usurped his identity, and that his former friends consider him a deserter.

Speaker: Diana Hayrapetyan, Professor of Armenian at Harvard University and a PhD candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University.