“Oh! Tigran! Lucas!” exclaims Jane, the PR, as she enters the foyer. I had walked straight past the filmmaker I was there to interview at an innocuous office building in Edgecliff, and was sitting opposite him, obliviously.
The man who reaches out to shake my hand seems unassuming and modest.
Yet that man, Tigran Tovmasian, is anything but. A self-taught filmmaker from western Sydney with a background in combat sport, Tovmasian’s directorial debut, The Circus Lion, has garnered attention and acclaim at local and international film festivals over the past 12 months.
The 20-minute short film follows Samvel, a young Armenian-Australian wrestler who fights to make the national team to escape his socioeconomic difficulties and grief surrounding the death of his father.
Shot in black and white and the tighter 4:3 format, the film’s appearance is deliberately designed to evoke a sense of imprisonment and claustrophobia, reflecting Tovmasian’s experience of feeling like a “trapped circus lion” within his upbringing and community.
But acting in the film’s lead role challenged many of his existing perceptions around showing vulnerability.
Tovmasian says being honest with himself and his team helped them to pull through with the film. (Photo: Lucas Zhu)
“In judo and wrestling, you don’t have a choice. There is no chance for emotion. You just have to keep fighting,” he says.
“In the film world, of course there’s the tenacity and grit, but you’ve also got to be honest with what’s affecting you today. If you want to bring truth to the work, you gotta start by being truthful with yourself.”
This commitment to honesty also shaped how Tovmasian led the film’s production.
“I felt that with a team that I had hired I’d never had to pretend to be confident. I could just be honest and say, ‘Hey, I’m really stressed today,’ and then people would sort of take that on. I think it’s better and healthier that way,” he says.
That raw honesty, according to Daniel Havas, the film’s creative producer, was what likely made it feel authentic.
“If I didn’t know something, I’d be like ‘I don’t know this, but we’re gonna figure it out,’” he adds.
“The best artworks require the artist to be personal and real, and Tigran put a lot of himself on the line there.”
I learnt just to be yourself, and tell stories that matter to you.
Tigran Tovmasian
Since premiering in September 2025, The Circus Lion has received the Best International Film award at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival and has qualified for the Academy Award longlist.
It also featured at the 2026 AACTA Awards and screened at the 10th anniversary Armenian Film Festival Australia (AFFA) – a rare recognition given only about 1,500 of an estimated 12,295 Australian-made short films each year are tracked by IMDb, according to a May 2026 public submission to the National Cultural Policy.
For Hourie Demirjian, co-director and co-founder of AFFA, Tovmasian’s film is a testament to the growing Armenian Australian film scene.
“He’s balanced the emotion and the physicality of the talent in such a unique way,” she says. “It’s an outstanding short film … it puts Armenian filmmakers on the map, and we’re very proud of him.”
But the Tigran sitting opposite me seems humble compared to the attention his film is receiving.
“I learnt just to be yourself, and tell stories that matter to you,” he says. Though he admits self-producing films is “gritty, it’s dirty, sometimes you’re actually losing money on them, the hours … the workload is ridiculous,” he adds it is still “far more rewarding”.
Tovmasian admits that though self-producing films takes a toll, the satisfaction at the end makes it worthwhile. (Photo: Lucas Zhu)
We step out onto the sidewalk for photographs. Despite the blazing sun, the roar of passing traffic, and my repetitive directions for poses, the laidback Tovmasian remains calm and collected.
I ask him what advice he would give his younger self, and he briefly pauses before answering.
“Don’t listen to everyone’s opinions because at the end of the day, it’s gonna work out,” he says.
“Just keep doing the hard work, and try and not stress about what’s coming.”
Main image: Armenian-Australian filmmaker and actor Tigran Tovmasian in Edgecliff. Photo: Lucas Zhu.
