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Das Leben des armenischen Dichters Sayat-Nova, von der Kindheit bis zum Tod, seine spirituelle Reise, seine künstlerischen Bemühungen und inneren Konflikte, das von Michail Vartanov als revolutionär gefeiert wurde.

Filmed in wartime and edited by candlelight, Mikhail Vartanov's rarely seen masterwork tells of his friendship with the genius Sergei Parajanov who was arrested by KGB, at the height of his fame, for the outspoken criticism of the Soviet regime. Vartanov resurrects the riveting scenes from his banned 1969 film, The Color of Armenian Land, where Paradjanov concocts the chef-d'oeuvre Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - then reveals a shocking secret request Parajanov sent him in an unpublished 1974 letter from the Ukrainian prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's staggering last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession - the original camera negative of which survives in Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992) - as Parajanov comments on this cherished autobiographical film. The foremost achievement of The Last Spring, emphasized by the American and European critics, is Vartanov's exquisite wordless montage that "evoked the very soul" of Parajanov and earned the praise of many of cinema's greatest masters, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

The Confession survives in Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992) in its original camera negative. It remained unfinished due to the death of Sergei Parajanov. The Confession was his favorite screenplay, which was written in the 1960s and was his film-memory of the childhood, student years, marriage, and more as the fantasist Parajanov perceived it. Parajanov gifted the screenplay to Mikhail Vartanov, made a drawing on the cover and wrote: "The Confession will only be made by a director born in 1924 in Tiflis, Georgia." He predicted that he would not finish it.

Blacklisted for portraying his friends Paradjanov (imprisoned in 1974) and Minas (assassinated in 1975), Vartanov had to wait 20 years to complete the trilogy with Minas: Rekviem (1989) and Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992)

Vartanov documents the life of people in the mountains of Armenia.

One of the USSR's most watched and popular comedies about two families and a mulberry tree was Mikhail Vartanov's first collaboration with Gennadi Melkonyan

Aware of the consequences of displeasing the Soviet censors, who had shelved his first two films, Vartanov documents one day in the life of postal workers in Armenia.