ArmInfo. The promised "objective, impartial film about the events of March 1, based exclusively on facts" failed, a well-known Armenian journalist and writer Ashot Ghazaryan wrote in his author's article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) about the film "The Case of March 1".
The author reminds that the film "Case of March 1", the script for which was made by Russian TV presenter Roman Babayan and Anton Grishin, and directed by Dmitry Novokshonov, presents the events of March 1-2, 2008, when 10 people died in Yerevan, and more than 200 received injuries of various severity.
Essentially, Ghazaryan writes, who also participated in the film and commented on the events of those days, the film promotes the idea of the responsibility for everything that happened to the presidential candidate in those elections Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first president of the republic, and his supporters, including the current Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan. Other opinions were not included in the final version of the film. This naturally caused outrage among respondents, eyewitnesses and participants in those tragic events, who did not regret their time, spiritual strength and dispelled their memory and wounds for another revival of those memories for the sake of objective reproduction of the assessment of what happened in the film. However, instead, they, for the most part, those who considered the authorities, President Robert Kocharyan, to be the main culprit of the bloodshed, turned out to be participants of a certain show, most likely, intended with a certain unequivocal task.
The political writer notes that the Supervisory Board of Armenia on Media Ethics made a special statement about the film. Armenian media experts, in particular, noted that the authors of the film "The Case of March 1" crossed a number of 'red lines', outlining the boundaries of professional, quality journalism, including documentary filmmaking. The testimonies of the film participants, documented by the Supervisory Board, suggest that the authors of the film abused people's trust. Although two of the protesters following the 2008 presidential election, Aram Manukyan (chairman of the opposition Republic Party, an ally of Levon Ter-Petrosian) and Vladimir Karapetyan (former press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry), are featured in the film, however, as they state, all those fragments in according to which the then authorities of Armenia were responsible for the tragedy, were cut. In addition, Manukyan and Karapetyan say that they were misled ''about the real authors of the film and its orientation''.
''I don't know who could be interested in the ''The March 1 Case'' in Russia. In Armenia, it must be supposed, pleased a rather narrow circle of supporters of the former extremely unpopular authorities. In the overwhelming majority of the audience, the film caused a categorical rejection. I would not like it to become another barrier and irritant in relations between Yerevan and Moscow, "Ashot Ghazaryan mentioned in his article.