ZAKO (PROJECT)

ԶԱԿՈ (ՆԱԽԱԳԻԾ)

By Tigran ARAKELYAN

NATIONAL CINEMA CENTER OF ARMENIA - as FIN

Historical - Development 2024


Festivals
& Awards

ReAnimania 2020
Due to the support of "ReAnimania" film festival ZAKO, by Tigran Arakelyan (The Raw Fruit) will participate in the ANNECY’s film market. To mention - ANNECY is the largest international animation film festival.
Fest. Animation Annecy - MIFA 2023
ZAKO, a feature animation project by Tigran Arakelyan has been selected for 4th Annecy Festival Residency to participate in the "Graphic development for animation feature film" program.
    • Year of production
    • 2024
    • Genres
    • Historical, Drama
    • Countries
    • ARMENIA
    • Languages
    • ARMENIAN
    • Duration
    • 90 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Tigran ARAKELYAN
    • Writer(s)
    • Edgar BAGHDASARYAN
    • Producer(s)
    • Susanna KHACHATRYAN (OnOff Studio)
    • Synopsis
    • Zako - this is the name German soldiers give to Soviet- Armenian painter Sargis Mangasaryan. Thanks to his talent, Zako prevails and survives the hell of WWII military camps. In 1941, Zako was captured and dispatched to the military camp where he faced to the full inhumanity of war. Enduring this brutality, he turns to drawing portraits of his tormentors to survive. However, yearning for freedom he makes repeated attempts to escape. Captured again, his reputation as an artist saves him from death, but not from the more deadly camp. Meanwhile, the Stalinist terror reaches his home village deep in the south of Armenia. The villagers are imprisoned on false charges and sent to Siberia, while the rest are trapped in a mental prison of horror and paranoia. Surviving the war years through unwavering resilience and hope, Zako is eventually liberated by the Allied forces. But the return home becomes the beginning of a new nightmare, as all war prisoners are recognized as enemies of the Soviet Union and exiled to Siberia. Forced to rely on his art for survival, Zako paints portraits of Stalin and propaganda posters to evade exile. Yet, with each stroke he slowly loses hope of ever expressing himself freely. A year later, in 1956, standing in front of Picasso's Guernica in Moscow, Zako is in wonderment at a new kind of art that shows him the path towards finding truth and sence through the darkness and chaos of his past. A path, where art eventually triumphs over death.