For five years, the entire operation fit inside a bookstore. Every first Friday of the month, from 2015 to 2020, a small crowd gathered at Abril Books in Glendale to watch films by Armenian directors and talk about them afterward. No red carpet, no multi-day pass, no gala. Just Armen and Mary Karaoghlanian, the couple who started it, and a room full of people who kept showing up.
This month, that same organization is running a four-day festival across a rooftop hotel event and a downtown movie theater, drawing thousands of people to a city that, by the founders' own account, barely had an Armenian film culture to speak of when they started. If you've noticed the festival posters around Brand Boulevard or seen the name pop up on your neighbor's calendar, the part worth understanding isn't just what's screening this year. It's why the Armenian Film Society can't seem to hold this event in the same place twice.
From a Monthly Gathering to a Four-Day Festival
The Karaoghlanians didn't launch a festival right away, and they've said that was deliberate. They spent eight years building an audience through those monthly Abril Books screenings before attempting anything bigger. When the pandemic forced Abril Books into a smaller space, the organization went through what Armen Karaoghlanian has described as an identity crisis of sorts, losing the physical home that had anchored its first five years. Out of that came the idea for an actual festival, timed to launch in 2023, which happened to be the hundredth anniversary of Armenian cinema.
That first festival drew close to 2,000 attendees across venues that included the Alex Theatre, Laemmle Glendale, and Hero House, with an American premiere of Michael A. Goorjian's Amerikatsi as one of its centerpieces. The following year, the whole event moved to LOOK Cinemas for the American premiere of Atom Egoyan's Seven Veils. By 2025, the footprint expanded again: an opening night at the Alex Theatre for the Los Angeles premiere of Monsieur Aznavour, followed by three days of screenings at The Americana at Brand, plus a gala marking the Armenian Film Society's tenth year. That 2025 opening also happened to fall one day before the Alex Theatre itself turned 100, meaning the festival closed out the venue's first century of programming.
Now in its fourth year, the festival runs September 17 through 20, 2026, with an opening reception the evening before, on the 16th. This year that reception isn't at a movie theater at all. It's a rooftop party at The Glenmark, with a DJ and passed appetizers, before the slate of screenings moves into AMC The Americana at Brand 18 for the rest of the week.
A Different Address Every Year
Line up the venues by year and the pattern is hard to miss:
- 2023: Alex Theatre, Laemmle Glendale, Hero House
- 2024: LOOK Cinemas
- 2025: Alex Theatre (opening night), The Americana at Brand, Vertigo
- 2026: The Glenmark rooftop (opening reception), AMC The Americana at Brand 18 (screenings)
That's four editions and effectively four different combinations of venues. A festival that stayed the same size would have settled into one home by now. This one hasn't, because it keeps outgrowing whatever room it's in. Organizers have said attendance roughly doubled to more than 3,000 last year, and this year's guest list, which includes Oscar-nominated filmmaker Reed Van Dyk alongside Hiam Abbass, Karren Karagulian, and Arseni Khachaturan, plus Oscar winners Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, reads more like an industry event than a community screening night.
The move to a hotel rooftop for opening night this year fits that trajectory. A single theater lobby can't comfortably hold a party for a crowd that size, so the social component has split off from the screenings entirely. Karaoghlanian summed up the growth simply: "we doubled attendance to more than 3,000 attendees."
The festival is specific about what it will and won't show, too. Its own submission guidelines require that every film have an actual Armenian connection, either through a director, cast member in a key creative role, or subject matter tied to Armenian culture or Armenia itself. That's not a minor detail. It means the growth isn't coming from casting a wider net. It's coming from a genuinely narrow, curated program finding a bigger audience every year, which is a different kind of story than most film festivals can tell.
The Armenian Film Society has also built relationships with institutions like the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and American Cinematheque along the way, which is part of why past guests have included names like Ryan Coogler and Atom Egoyan. A festival that started with zero industry infrastructure now has enough pull to bring in that caliber of filmmaker for a week centered entirely on Armenian storytelling.
Two Glendales, Running on Different Clocks
Part of what makes this festival's growth interesting from a resident's perspective is where it's happening. The Americana at Brand and the Alex Theatre both sit in the Brand Boulevard corridor, the commercial spine of downtown Glendale. That's where the crowds, the guest lists, and the rooftop party will concentrate this week.
A few miles north, up in Montrose, none of that changes anything about a Sunday morning. The Montrose Harvest Market has run on Honolulu Avenue since the early 2000s, every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, closed only for Christmas and Easter. Vendors sell produce and baked goods to the same mix of regulars they always have, and the festival happening downtown that same weekend won't put a dent in the crowd at the coffee stand.
It's a small thing, but it says something true about Glendale that a lot of coverage of the city misses. A single event, even a fast-growing one with international guests, doesn't reshape the whole city's calendar. Glendale is big enough and varied enough in its geography that downtown can be hosting a four-day film festival with a hotel rooftop party while a neighborhood a few miles away keeps its Sunday exactly the way it's always been. Knowing which parts of the city move together and which parts run independently is the kind of detail that only comes from actually paying attention to the place over time, not from a single visit.
What to Watch Next Year
If the pattern holds, next year's festival will need an even bigger footprint than this one. A festival that has changed venues four years running, added an industry gala, and started pulling in Oscar winners isn't likely to plateau at a single hotel rooftop and one theater complex. The more interesting question for anyone tracking Glendale's cultural calendar isn't whether the Armenian Film Festival will keep growing. It's which building in the Brand Boulevard corridor gets tapped next to hold it.
For now, opening night is September 16 at The Glenmark, and the screenings run through September 20 at AMC The Americana at Brand 18. Full program details are available directly through the Armenian Film Society.
Glendale's neighborhoods keep changing in ways like this, one new venue, one new tradition at a time, and that kind of steady growth is exactly what makes a place worth watching closely. If you're curious what your own corner of Glendale is worth in a market that keeps shifting alongside it, Speranta Group is happy to walk you through it. Request a Free Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk.
