Don Askarian was born in
Stepanakert in the
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast,
Soviet Union (today
Azerbaijan). In 1967, he moved to
Moscow and studied history and art, and worked as an assistant director and
film critic for a year after his graduation. Askarian was imprisoned during 1975–1977, and in 1978 he emigrated from the Soviet Union to
West Berlin. He lived and worked in
Germany, the
Netherlands and in
Armenia, where he founded his own film companies. He was awarded numerous prizes at several international film festivals. His films were co-produced and broadcast by
ARD,
WDR,
ZDF,
Channel 4,
Arte, as well as Belgian, Greek, Swiss, Slovak, Armenian TV Channels. In 1996, Askarian published a book called
The Dangerous Light. In 2002 he was honored with a Harvard Film Archive retrospective and two years later, in 2004, received the Golden Camera Award for Life Achievement at Int. ART Film Festival, Slovakia. Askarian's brother is sculptor and painter Robert Askarian. Askarian died on 6 October 2018 in
Berlin. ==Filmography==