Border

Running time: 82 mins

A hauntingly beautiful, wordless film which transcends genres and easy definition with its poetically rendered tale of a buffalo stranded on the wrong side of the BORDER.

A young buffalo has somehow wandered across the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, with its high wire fences, sentry towers and armed guards, and gotten mired in the mud. Rescued by villagers, it is now a frightened outsider, silent witness and captive: a lone buffalo surrounded by cows, goats and humans. To return home is all it wants, but forever there is ? the border.

Harutyan Khachatryan?s Border, a symphony of image and sound, is cinema at its purest. Impeccably edited, stunningly shot, rich in metaphor and accompanied by a haunting soundtrack, Border is a brilliantly conceived, perfectly executed cinematic poem. It is the latest child of Armenian cinema, the cinema of Paradjanov and Peleshian, and it does them proud.

- Charlie Cockey

Preceded by the short film: MOSQUITO; Director: Jeremy Engle, Country: USA, Film Info: 12 min - Mosquito fights for respect on a fateful Halloween night in 1974.