On the Old Roman Road

Levon is a writer of Armenian extraction who lives in Rotterdam. He thinks back on his life in his homeland. About his brother-in-law Manuk who robbed dead Turks, about a brilliant Kurdish musician, a bitcher with a red beard (from henna or blood), a 17-year-old girl with chestnut-coloured skin, a concubine and a Turkish Apollo with eight wives who likes burying himself in hot ash. His memory is also populated by beautiful thoroughbred horses, stray dogs, camel drivers, soldiers and Turkish policemen. The images of On the Old Roman Road are contained in poetic, almost surrealist scenes of magic love and political cruelty. This is contrasted with reality in Rotterdam: a modern crime story with Armenian terrorists and a Kurdish tragedy.Don Askarian: ‘To change the dramatic balance of the film into a real, live, exciting harmony, I needed the story about the rich old Armenian, who organised strange receptions and avant-garde music evenings in his house. (…) I also needed the Kurdish issue in the film. So much pain and so much injustice to the Kurds! Indifference and complicity by politics! The face of Öcalan, filled with medication, is engraved on my memory.