Los Angeles Film Festival STORYTELLA

Presented by the renowned Parajanov-Vartanov Institute, Los Angeles Film Festival STORYTELLA will screen and award fiction films in an official sidebar of the institute’s signature annual festival DOC LA, which has traditionally programmed fictional stories alongside the documentary competition.

We are enthusiastic about discovering outstanding fiction films by students, emerging auteurs, and established masters. We are also interested in unusual, strange and unclassifiable films, since the institute that presents the festival is named after the revered nonconformists Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) and Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009), who overcame censorship, persecution and low budgets, and earned praise for their daring point of view from many of cinema’s greatest luminaries, such as Godard, Coppola and Tarkovsky, and inspired the likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga. The festival’s programmer is their disciple and UCLA alum Martiros Vartanov who was as a juror and curator at festivals in Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Busan and worked on the restoration of The Color of Pomegranates selected for Festival de Cannes.

The institute’s and the festival’s awardees, alums and guests include (Oscar) Academy Award ® winners Martin Scorsese, Emma Thompson, Marion Cotillard, Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, as well as Werner Herzog, Emilio Rivera, Usher, Ice-T, Joe Berlinger, Errol Morris, Ross Kauffman, Jem Cohen, Alfred Molina, William Baldwin, Angela Bassett, Mark Ruffalo, Pierce Brosnan, Dennis Quaid, Liam Neeson, Christoph Waltz, John Malkovich, Keith David, Michael Weatherly, Michelle Rodriguez, Woody Harrelson, Gerard Butler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Seth Rogen, Stefania Spampinato, Steven Ogg, Angourie Rice, Matilda De Angelis, Moby, Alana Haim, Virginie Ledoyen, Dave Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan, French cinema icon Jean Vigo, and the members of Grammy winning rock bands Smashing Pumpkins, Korn, and System Of A Down.