By Ani Ghulinyan, OC Media

Despite being over 20 years old, Armenian–American director Gor Kirakosyan’s debut remains one of the classic comedies within new Armenian cinema.

Originally released in 2006, Big Story in a Small City was inspired by a real-life morgue mix-up. Narrated by Grigor Janoyan (Hrant Tokhatyan), the film follows his own death and the subsequent twists and turns that emerge after his family mistakenly brings home the wrong body from the morgue.

Beyond the unusual premise and its tragicomic tone, the film does a strong job of establishing its world — 2000s Yerevan. Through sharp sketches of its secondary characters, we gradually learn about people around Grigor through his own narration.

‘This is my wife, Ofelia. She has been a housewife her whole life. She drinks five cups of coffee every day and loves to watch Mexican soap operas’.

This is about how much we learn about each character: the uncle who makes dad jokes at inappropriate times, the cousin who has no situational awareness, the boys playing backgammon in the courtyard that are the main source of the gossip, and so on. The film has no intention of going deeper into any of them, because they are only meant to be caricatures, stereotypes — half-minute sketches of disposable characters we never see again, yet which expands the world in which the main characters live.

The plot develops when Grigor’s son Hayko, his cousin, and a close friend decide to discover who the dead man with scars and criminal tattoos accidentally lying in their living room really is. Discovering that another family is in possession of their father’s body, they realise they only have until 19:00 to recover the body before the main funeral ceremony. This sets up the film’s central issue, time, and its central contrast, the class divide between the two families.

Grigor’s family lives on the ninth floor of a regular Soviet-era apartment building, looking forward to the $1,000 their US-based aunt supposedly will send to cover funeral expenses. They do not own a car or a phone, and instead rely on community and relatives’ support when needed.

In comparison, the audience is introduced to the second family through one of the deceased’s four sons reading off a shopping list for the massive dinner party they’re throwing to honour their father, Ruben Pashayan, the head of an organised crime family.

Through humour and comic situations, the film challenges traditional ideas about death and grief by pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to joke about in Armenia, while still finding moments to remind the audience that underneath all that comedy, someone actually died, and people are actually grieving.

Yet male characters showing real emotion such as sadness, devastation, or grief is still unusual in Armenian cinema; therefore, it is the women who end up carrying the emotional weight of the film. They rarely appear as decision-makers or active players in the plot, but whenever they’re on screen and not just the object of a joke, they’re the ones used to convey real suffering and grief.

The film also uses social archetypes of institutions in a way that makes it funny through relatability. When the family arrives at the morgue to report the mistake, the worker flatly refuses to admit any error, ready to die on that hill. This is a very familiar scenario to anyone with experience of the ‘infallible’ Armenian bureaucracy.

In another scene, an ambulance worker refuses to help swap the coffins back, calling it illegal, until a bribe changes his mind instantly. A police officer catches the group mid-swap, yet when he learns one of them is connected to a local criminal, he also does not hesitate to take some money to keep his mouth shut. Although such blatant bribery is no longer common practice in Armenia, the closeness of the time when it was acceptable makes such scenes very resonant. It is these real-life scenarios, where a certain reality is shown rather than explained, that gives this film its special, on-point humour.

The film also thrives on its visual style. The tilted angles, aerial shots, and unconventional framing are not typical of Armenian cinema and bring a refreshing perspective. A recurring, rhythmic montage style used every time someone calls an elevator, starts a car, or lights a cigarette, always set to the same driving music, gives the film momentum and sets the tempo. Documentary-style shots of Yerevan’s streets, apartment blocks and courtyards make it feel warm and familiar.

Where it falls short is the dialogue. In between the visual clues and inherently comic situations, the conversations often feel slow and out of place, either repetitively over-explaining a situation, or relying on exaggerated delivery to compensate for weaker writing.

Twenty years on, watching the film feels nostalgic. Much of the humour has aged surprisingly well, though some jokes, particularly the gendered ones, have not. Many actors have also since gone on to become well-known names in Armenian comedy and television, making this an interesting watch as they begin their careers. Overall, Kirakosyan’s Big Story in a Small City reminds us that in Yerevan, you should never say never.

Film details: Big Story In A Small City (2006) directed by Gor Kirakosian. The film was screened on 18 September 2026 at the TUMO Centre for Creative Technologies in Yerevan. The film is available to stream on Kinodaran.