Staff Picks: Favourite films selected by Hot Docs staff!

"This is a masterpiece of world cinema that influenced the history of visual art, becoming the ‘golden standard’ of poetic and surrealist filmmaking." - Tetiana Mala, 2024-25 Communications Manager

The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov is the director’s most renowned film, one that has influenced global culture and inspired artists ranging from Madonna and Lady Gaga to Jean-Luc Godard and Martin Scorsese.

The Color of Pomegranates is not just a film—it is a visual poem. It immerses the viewer in the life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, not through traditional storytelling, but by evoking the metaphorical world of his feelings and thoughts. Every frame is like a painting, rich in symbolism and cultural codes, which Parajanov masterfully interweaves with music and poetry.

Parajanov created an extremely complex cinematic collage, saturated with visual metaphors, where conventional Western elements such as dynamic plot, dialogue, and linear narrative are almost entirely absent. Instead, The Color of Pomegranates embodies the essence of 1960s arthouse cinema: a fusion of painterly expressiveness, dream logic, and boundless experimentation. The film serves as a case study in the evolution of surrealist arthouse filmmaking of its era.

This cult classic will be presented in the restored version by The Martin Scorsese Film Foundation in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna — completed last year to mark the 100th anniversary of Sergei Parajanov’s birth.

In Armenian, with English subtitles.

This is Tetiana’s Staff Pick: Tetiana is a film marketing professional and cultural project manager with an alter ego of a swimmer, mountain lover, and pie baker. Her main focus today is cultural diplomacy and decolonization in the arts.

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