10 May 2023
Frunze Dovlatyan's Hello, It's Me (1965) is included in the Cannes Film Festival’s "Cannes Classics" program and will be screened during the festival. This iconic screening at the Cannes Film Festival is a part of the Armenian Cinema Jubilee initiatives of the National Cinema Center of Armenia, which aims to popularize and promote one of the best works of the century-old Armenian film heritage.
The Cinema Center started the preparatory works for the restoration of Hello, It's Me one and a half years back since such an undertaking normally requires a long preparatory period. The restoration of the film was carried out with the financial support of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund in 2023, the restoration work was conducted by the Latvian “Locomotive Classics” studio. The restored version combines the film's original Armenian and Russian audio tracks, thus, managing to create a bilingual version of the film for the first time.
Frunze Dovlatyan's Hello, It's Me is a reference to the tragic story based on the real-life of the Soviet physicist Artyom Alikhanyan -the mystery of both love and science intermingled. Dovlatyan's film is about self-discovery and self-awareness, it’s about establishing one's own "Self" and finding a place in this world. On behalf of the Armenian community, the protagonist says, "Hello, it's me”, trying to pave the way for many other " individuals" to emerge.
Cast: Armen Djigarkhanyan, Rolan Bykov, Natalya Fateeva, Margarita Terekhova, Galya Novents, L. Babichkova, Frunze Dovlatyan
In 1966 10 million viewers watched Hello, It's Me in cinemas. The film was released in 1966 and included in the competition program of the Cannes Film Festival. The film was the first independent work by Frunze Dovlatyan. Galya Novents and Margarita Terekhova made their film debut in this film.
P.S. Frunze Dovlatyan's Hello, It’s Me is the second restored Armenian film to be included in the "Cannes Classics" retrospective program of the Cannes International Film Festival. Back in 2014, The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat-Nova) by Sergey Parajanov was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the "Cannes Classics" section among other 24 films. The film was restored by Bologna’s L’immagine Ritrovata and presented at the film festival by Film Foundation-World Cinema Project, which had undertaken the restoration, closely cooperated with Armenian experts and used Armenian archives while restoring the film.
