The Film

‘’Taniel’’ is a multi-award winning short arthouse film about the last days of Taniel Varoujan. Film Noir in style, “Taniel” pays homage to the era of dramatic filmmaking with extreme lighting and camera angles. The narrative is mostly heard through poetry, with Varoujan poems in Armenian expressing the emotions in each of the scenes; and narrative poetry in English delivered with an emotive depth of feeling by Sean Bean.

Taniel is currently taking part in the film festival circuit. It won several awards, just returning from Fresco International Film Festival with its 8th award. Taniel has been recognised with two awards at the Bermuda International Film Festival, Best Short Film awards at ARPA and L’age D’Or International Film Festivals and Don Quixote special mention award at Avanca Festival, amongst others. The film was also selected by a number of festivals all over the world, including Sydney, Toronto, Bucharest, Washington DC, Buenos Aires etc, as well as by the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, Shetland’s Screenplay Festival, curated by Mark Kermode; and one of the oldest festivals in Europe in Montecatini. Taniel also had some very special screenings at The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan and the iconic Lincoln Center in New York.

The team also had two emotional screenings recently, tracing the poet’s footsteps in Istanbul, at Hrant Dink Foundation; and at Ghent University in Belgium where he studied; and are looking forward to sharing the film with the London’s audiences.

The Team 

Director - Garo Berberian is a British filmmaker born in London. Garo graduated from Berkshire School of Art and Design with a merit in Photography. He then moved into Broadcast Television, rising up through the ranks from editor to director, working on numerous award-winning television, documentary and commercial campaigns. Garo’s first short film - “Return of the Tyke”, was the winner of the Best Short audience award at the 2014 ARPA film festival in Los Angeles. He is currently working on several new projects, including the adaptation of Iris Murdoch’s The Italian Girl; and a documentary on a pioneering female DJ, Sam Divine. 

Producer – Nare Ter-Gabrielyan 

DOP and English Poetry – Ben Hogson 

Poetry producer – Tatevik Ayvazyan

Actors:

Narrator – Sean Bean 

Varoujan – Tigran Gaboyan 

Voice of Varoujan – Yegya Akgun

Araxie – Shoghakat Mlke-Galstian