Camille Cottin, Tamara Stepanyan ‘In the Land of Arto’ Film Interview

The 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival opens with a movie that gives audiences plenty to think about, courtesy of Tamara Stepanyan’s fiction feature directorial debut In the Land of Arto, starring Camille Cottin (Call My Agent!, House of Gucci) and Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Holy Spider, Tatami).

Cottin plays a French woman named Céline, who arrives in Armenia from France to legalize the death of her husband Arto, who died by suicide, only to discover that he lied to her about his identity. “So begins a journey through Arto’s past, as she meets people left disabled by the battles of 2020, veterans from the 1990s, hauntings of a never-ending war” with Azerbaijan, highlights a synopsis.

Amir Ebrahimi plays an Armenian woman who helps the protagonist understand more about the history and the scars of the country. Other cast members include Shant Hovhannisyan, Hovnatan Avédikian, Alexander Khachatryan, Babken Chobanyan and Denis Lavant. Be For Films is handling sales duties on the French-American co-production.

Cottin tells THR that she enjoys acting in both dramas and comedies, but acknowledges that Arto took a lot of effort, not only because of the difficult journey of her character. “It definitely was a challenge given the trajectory of this woman and the ghost of her husband, and how you can reconcile, understand, forgive people when they are gone,” she explains. “What’s beautiful is that Tamara also made this love story to say that the conversation continues even after death.”

Much more than simply a story about a married couple and their secrets, In the Land of Arto paints a picture of a whole country. “It’s about a collective trauma,” Stepanyan tells THR. “It is about a collective history that includes several wars, warriors and wounded women, wounded men and a wounded country. Armenia went through a lot — genocide, war and then there was a big earthquake [in 1988]. So, it is more than one woman’s story. And I just felt that I needed to talk about mourning, because I think it’s something that is important to talk about. It takes time.”

Asked about the choice of Arto’s death by suicide, the filmmaker explains: “I wanted a sudden death, but at the same time, I felt the guy should die because he could not bear the defeat. I think it’s very important, if you’re nationalist or not, other than the fact that you lost land, it is really about the realization that so many people, and so much youth, died for nothing.”

In her portrayal of Céline, Cottin says she had to convey both the character’s determination and her confusion. “The amount of questions and guilt and search for understanding is just crazy, but the fact that she has children means that she needs to keep on moving,” the actress explains. “And the children need hope, so you need to be strong. So little by little, the feelings, the emotions, are left aside to focus on the answers, the quest, action. That’s how I danced the character.”

The actress has a friend whose father is Armenian, but she didn’t know much about the country’s history. “When I met Tamara, she really opened the door to the story of this country and the political context for me, and we just ended up having the dream of making this film together,” she recalls. “She’s very magnetic, and this is really like a declaration of love to her country.”

Coming to the film without much knowledge about Armenia actually helped her with her character, she adds. “Céline is ignorant of a lot of the history, which matched where I was regarding Armenia,” Cottin tells THR. “But I was just really excited to dive into the history of a country, travel through its landscapes, and work with a whole team where, I would say, 70 percent of the crew was Armenian. It was really a way of being totally involved and immersed and trying to understand the culture.”

In fact, much of the shoot took place in Armenia. “All the scenes in the country, I did actually shoot in Armenia,” Stepanyan emphasizes. The crew even shot in a village near the border with Azerbaijan.

Much of the crew was Armenian, but as cinematographer, the director was excited to have attracted Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Saint Omer), “the French mega superstar cinematographer, and a woman who’s done around 30 feature films,” Stepanyan tells THR with a smile. “When I wanted to work with her, everybody said, ‘Don’t even try! She refuses a film every week, and by very big directors.’ But I had this deep desire to make my film through her eyes, through her images. So, I had to try. And I did. And she accepted. It was really tremendous.”

Stepanyan’s experience as a documentary filmmaker shines through in various ways throughout Arto. “Yes, there’s a kind of documentary feel to the movie,” she says. “Claire is also very, very sensitive to documentary. She’s done a lot of documentaries, and we both wanted to bring the real into fiction, bring documentary into fiction. Both can nourish each other.”

Stepanyan found joy in the “real collaboration” of the entire creative team behind and in front of the camera. “For me, cinema is a collective work, and I love that,” she says. “Camille had this beautiful tradition to come on set and say: ‘Okay, my darling, let’s read this again, and let’s discuss this again.’ And sometimes she made proposals that I accepted. Sometimes I wouldn’t. The same with Zar and the other actors and Claire. I really enjoyed that everybody was there to collaborate and to push my idea as far as possible.”

Adding to the authenticity of the atmosphere in Arto is a range of Armenian actors, including Hovhannisyan, whom Stepanyan calls “one of the greatest actors in Armenia today.” Most actors are from local theaters, though. “I spent two months in Armenia, deeply casting, and I basically picked a lot of people from the places we shot at,” the director explains. “I wanted them to feel authentic and seem like they are really part of the scenery.”

For one smaller role in a memorable scene, the director cast a local man who is a mechanic rather than an actor. “I was scouting with Claire, and we were going up these stairs of this broken building, and this guy asks: ‘Are you looking for something?’ And I said I’m making a film, and I want to maybe take a shot from here. He said: ‘You know, this house was mine. I was born in this house,’” Stepanyan tells THR. “He lived there when the earthquake happened. He told me the whole story of his family. And I was there with Claire. I was translating to Claire, and we looked at each other and said: This guy has to be in the film. And then I wrote a little role for him.”