Armand Yervant Tufenkian (b. 1988) is an Armenian filmmaker, artist and writer.
His debut feature In the Manner of Smoke (2025), a long-form observation of disparate perspectives on forest fires, premiered at Cinéma du Réel where it won the International Award.
Previous films include Accession (2018), which maps an informal network of seed exchange through letter correspondence, and in lightning Agnes (2014), made at an elevation of ten thousand feet in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness of Colorado.
Tufenkian's films have screened internationally at festivals such as the Viennale, Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, Courtisane, Open City, Mar del Plata, Underdox, and as part of the Conscious Landscapes exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje (2019), the Reimagining the Land retrospective at Sheffield Doc/Fest (2020), the Cinema for All Pavilion at the Thailand Biennale (2024), and have been featured in publications such as MUBI Notebook, the Millennium Film Journal and Kathyrn Ramey's book Experimental Filmmaking.
His work has been supported recently by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and residencies at Fogo Island Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Monson Arts, and previously by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Puffin Foundation, and City of Chicago's Individual Artist Program.
He did doctoral studies at Duke University, where he started a dissertation on the poetics of community in cinema, and studied filmmaking at CalArts. Previously he taught in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego and worked as a fire lookout in the Sierra Nevada. He is currently a lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University (SUNY).
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Calendar
In the Manner of Smoke
Open City | May 2025
Jeu de Paume | April 2025
Cinéma du Réel | March 2025
"Sfumato: Takes on the Poetics of Smoke"
Critical Media Lab, McGill University | February 2025
in lightning Agnes
Thailand Biennale, Cinema for All Pavilion | February 2024
"Ornament and Repair in Color of Pomegranates"
Parajanov Centennial Conference, U of Southern California | Feb 2024
Accession
Courtisane | April 2025
Cinema Studies Student Conference (Keynote), NYU | February 2025
Critical Media Lab, McGill University | October 2024
Block Museum, Northwestern University | February 2024
Visible Evidence XXIX, Università degli Studi de Udine | September 2023
Bienal Ciudad y Ciencia, Círculo de Bellas Artes Madrid | February 2023
Film Forum, Braunschweig University of Art | November 2020
Reimagining the Land, retrospective at Sheffield Doc/Fest | Aug-Sep 2020
Mimesis Documentary Festival | August 2020
Our Habitats Programme | May 2020
Daimon Muestra Internacional de Cine | April 2020
UnionDocs | February 2020
Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje | December 2019
Pravo Ljudski | December 2019
Viennale | October 2019
Art of the Real at Lincoln Center | April 2019
Mar del Plata | November 2018
Underdox | October 2018
"Editing as Ecotone Formation"
Visible Evidence XXIX, Università degli Studi de Udine | September 2023
Submerged Narratives
Fogo Island Arts | May-June 2023
Temporary Fields
Lithium Gallery | November 2018
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Contact
armandtufenkian [at] gmail

Press
Léopold Colart. Festival Cinéma du Réel. Karoo: critique et création culturelle. 2025
Ambre Guidicelli. "Trouble de la fixité" Tsounami: revue de cinéma. 2025.
Chris Cassingham. "In the Manner of Smoke (Cinema du Réel '25 Review)" In Review Online. 2025
William Hernandez. Interview with the Director. Cinéma du Réel. 2025
Lucía Salas and Christopher Small. #3 Reimagining the Land. We Can't Go Home Again (podcast). 2020
Lauren Wagner. Thought provoking cinema. Viennale Hören (podcast). 2019
David Perrin. "Art of the Real 2019" MUBI Notebook. 2019
Jacob Zicheng Zhang. "An Archival Impulse, or Not: Accessioning" gallery no one. 2019
Dustin Chang. "Art of the Real: A Celebration of Non-Narrative Filmmaking" ScreenAnarchy. 2019
Lucía Salas. "Semillas del pasado/Seeds from the Past" Mar del Plata International Film Festival. 2018
Neil Young. "Far from the shallow now: two highlights from Underdox" Modern Times Review. 2018