In the Land of Arto

Camille Cottin and Zar Amir Ebrahimi travel through a scarred Armenia in search of hidden truths, in an atmospherically mysterious and thriller-tinged debut.

When French Céline arrives in Armenia to retrieve her deceased husband's birth certificate—so that their children can obtain Armenian citizenship—she encounters an unsettling truth. Her husband, Arto, turns out to have had a past entirely different from what she believed. Together with the enigmatically tough Arsine, she sets out across a traumatized, majestic Armenia. Their journey leads them toward Karabakh, the center of the long-standing armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the place that determined her husband's fate. Denis Lavant leaves his unmistakable mark on the film, as a war veteran at the end.

• Camilla Larsson