Anna Melikyan was born in Baku, Azerbaijan and raised in Armenia. In 2002, Melikyan graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), Moscow, Russia, where she had worked under the esteemed directors Sergei Solovyov and Valeri Rubinchik.
While at VGIK, Melikyan produced three short films that won recognition at Russian and international film festivals: Andante (1997), Let’s Fly (1999), and Poste Restante (2000), which won the Grand Prix at the St Anna student film festival in Russia, as well as the City of Melbourne Award for best short experimental film at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia.
Melikyan’s final student piece, Contrabass (2002), secured her a grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. With this grant, and the financial backing of Central Partnership, Russia’s largest independent film distributor, Melikyan was able to write and direct her first feature film, Mars (2004). Following Mars, Melikyan directed the critically well received Mermaid (2007), which brought her an Academy Award nomination, and a directing award at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition to currently working on her third film, Star (2008), which was co-written with Andrey Migachev and Viktoriya Bugayeva, Melikyan has also moved into producing film and television features with her new production company, Mars Media Entertainment.
Melikyan’s original screenplay for Mars presents the story of…
The full 1,600 word version of this article is published in Women Screenwriters: An International Guide, edited by Jill Nelmes and Jule Selbo, published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Carl Wilson 