Armenians in Film Fresno 2025

Katia Spivakova, also known as “videothepoet,” is a filmmaker and writer of Armenian and Russian descent based in the United States. She has worked with renowned artists from Atlantic Records, taking on roles as a shooter, editor, producer, and director. Her experience spans over a decade, contributing to music videos, live performances, advertising campaigns and social media content.
Co-founder of the global media collective Happy Cat Media Group, she combines her technical skills with a deep love for cinema and poetry - which often weaves into her visual storytelling.
While she has directed short films in the past, her latest project, All I Need, is the first to gain traction on the festival circuit.

Tigran Hamasyan is considered one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists/composers of his generation. A piano virtuoso with groove power, Hamasyan seamlessly fuses potent jazz improvisation and progressive rock with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia. Born in Gyumri, Armenia, in 1987, his musical journey began in his childhood home, where he was exposed to a diverse array of musical influences leading to him playing piano at the age of three, performing in festivals and competitions by the time he was eleven, and winning the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003. He released his debut album, World Passion, in 2004 at the age of seventeen. The following year, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Additional albums include New Era; Red Hail; A Fable, for which he was awarded a Victoires de la Musique (the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France); Shadow Theater; and Luys i Luso which featured the Yerevan State Chamber Choir focusing on Armenian sacred music stretching stylistically from the 5th century to the 20th century.
His Nonesuch debut, Mockroot (2015), won the Echo Jazz Award for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year; subsequent records for the label include An Ancient Observer (2017) the companion EP, For Gymuri (2018), Revisiting the Film (2021) and most recently StandArt (2022). Hamasyan was awarded the Deutscher Jazzpreis international category in Piano/Keyboards in 2021. Hamasyan has released records on France’s Plus Loins, Universal France, Nonesuch and ECM.
Hamasyan’s new conceptual album “The Bird of a Thousand Voices” was released in August 2024 on Naïve/Believe – his debut with the label. Tigran composed, scored, and arranged the much-anticipated project blending its traditional folk footprints with rock influences. The first single from the album “The Kingdom” can also be experienced as an interactive game at www.bird1000.com. The recently released double album is inspired by an ancient Armenian tale in which a hero travels into unseen realms to find and bring back a mythical bird – whose thousand different songs will awaken people again and bring harmony to the world. The transmedia music theater piece ‘The Bird of a Thousand Voices’, an intriguing immersive light installation with shadow play, digitally programmed voices, live music, and an Armenian English libretto, premiered at the Holland Festival in June 2024.
In addition to awards and critical acclaim, Hamasyan has built a dedicated following worldwide, as well as praise from Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau and the late Chick Corea. “With startling combinations of jazz, minimalist, electronic, folk and songwriterly elements…Hamasyan and his collaborators travel musical expanses marked with heavy grooves, ethereal voices, pristine piano playing and ancient melodies. You’ll hear nothing else like this,” (NPR).

Ruben Van Leer is an award-winning filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose work seamlessly blends cinema, music, dance, and digital technology to explore profound questions about human existence. His acclaimed sci-fi dance-opera Symmetry (2015), filmed inside CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, won 11 international awards, including the Golden Prague for Best Performance Arts, and is available on AppleTV. Van Leer's innovative projects, such as Sacred Environment (2017), a VR and live music performance that won the Audience Award at the Holland Festival, and The Boxer (2018), an opera-film for Dutch National Opera, have been showcased at prestigious venues including Teatro Grande Pompeii, Ballet National de Marseille, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Stedelijk Museum. As the founder of Truth.io, a platform for cross-media research, he continues to push the boundaries of artistic innovation, uniting ancient myths with modern science to inspire and connect global audiences.

Vahan Grigoryan was born in Yerevan in 1982. In 1999, Vahan graduated from Yerevan State University (Department of International Relations). In 2016, he started working in cinema. The Egg is his second work. His first short film, The Mud, earned him the Best Director Award at the Yerevan International Short Film Festival in 2022.

Ophelia Harutyunyan is an Armenian fiction and documentary filmmaker based out of Los Angeles and New York. She co-directed and produced the documentary Totally Under Control (NEON) about the US government's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She produced Crazy, Not Insane (HBO) which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She wrote and produced the fiction short film Red Apples which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. Her films have played at other notable film festivals like Sundance, SXSW, TIFF, Tribeca, Clermont Ferrand, etc. Most recently, she wrote and directed the short fiction film It Takes a Village..., an Armenian-French-Belgian co-production, which premiered at Clermont Ferrand IFF and won the grand prix from France TV. She produced the documentary WISE GUY David Chase and The Sopranos which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2024. She is currently directing a two-part feature documentary for HBO. She's a graduate of the Columbia University's Film MFA program and an alumna of the Berlinale Talents and La Biennale College Cinema programs.

Marina Arzumanova was born in 2001 in the small Armenian town, Jermuk. Around the age of 8, she moved to Istanbul but later moved back to Yerevan to begin her education at the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography, where she graduated in July 2023. During her time as a student, she worked as an assistant, video editor, director, and VFX artist for several film projects. Marina is in the process of completing her first feature length documentary, The Song and I, with Order Film Production, which is set to release in 2025.

Kevork was born in Sofia, Bulgaria to the family of an engineer and an architect. Best parents in the world! He was never good at school, and never would be. He started his career as a musician (rhythm guitarist) of a rock-punk-metal band, but soon realized that music was not his thing, or at least that’s what the drummer of the band said...
Kevork then went to film school, fascinated by computers and what they can do, and ended up becoming one of those “not that bad feature film editors.” Then again, he was also fascinated by lazy, bad directors, so he decided to become one himself. Ta-da: here he is!
Kevork got his BA in Film and TV editing at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in 2009 (Sofia, Bulgaria). In 2012, he graduated from the London Film Academy as a Writer & Director (London, UK). Kevork made his directorial debut with the short film, GETTING FAT IN A HEALTHY WAY (2015).