"Entering home, not even having unpacked my luggage yet, I turned on the computer and began to type fast. My first impressions about Armenia. First impressions are always the truest ones, so I did not want to lose even the least important ones. Then I sent my writing to my friends. Surprise, amazement, admiration. this was their reaction. Maite, they told me, you have to make a film about this."

Maite is telling the story of coming to Armenia, in French-English-Armenian, with an elegant French smile, opening a pack of Garni.

Maite is French. It has been three years since she moved to Armenia, and decided to stay here permanently. In her documentary.

But let me tell everything in order.

Maite was a TV reporter in Paris. In 2000 she started work on a documentary film on some French archeologists, traveling with them all over France.

At the same time, in far away and almost unknown Armenia, in the village of Benyamin in the Shirak Marz, in the place where a hospital is to be built, Armenian archeologists find rare artifacts from the Achemedian era and strictly forbid building anything there. The important discovery arouses the interest of the French archeologists and they decide to come to Armenia and to research it with their Armenian colleagues. Maite joins them.

"We stayed here for a week. At that moment, before going back to France and writing that e-mail to my friends, I understood that I would be back here to shoot a second film. And this time it was going to be about Armenia."

The movie, Mayr Hayastan (Mother Armenia), is made in the style of travel notes. The action begins and mostly takes place in Gyumri.

"I did not set a goal of showing the whole of Armenia in the film. This is a very personal movie; here is everything I have seen and felt while being in Armenia. We were shooting the movie two years, coming three times to Armenia during that period. Armenia is a country of contrasts and I wanted the people to see it in its all manifestations - in hot nice summer and very cold winter when the temperature gets to - 35 degrees in some places.

"Why Gyumri? Because it is the place where Armenia began for me."

In the film Maite displays the everyday life of the people, their joys and troubles, visits domiks where the women set the table immediately and begin to express their opinions on everything, since what was good and bad in Soviet times till the current "Thank God, we're not getting along that badly, there are many people who live worse than us" situation. This expression fully describes Armenians, especially people from Gyumri - whatever we feel, we say only good thing about our country.

Then Maite walks through the markets where the people hide their faces and murmur that everything is bad here, let the foreigners say it like that on televisor (TV).

In one scene in a domik school there is singing class. In another a car mechanic plays violin.

"As long as sing in the cold domiks children and a mechanic keeps his violin, can you have any doubt that this nation will survive," says one of the Maite's interviewees.

The film crew had to deviate from the script very often. Some subjects appeared in the film after accidental meetings. It was the same with this violin player.

Maite met him on the next to the last day of their stay in Gyumri. They were to move to Yerevan in two days and all of a sudden some part of their car got broken. So a man promised to fix it in a day.

"The next day he came to the museum where we were shooting, with dirty black hands, and said that everything was OK with the car. I began to thank him and asked whether it was difficult. 'Not more difficult than a symphony in E minor' he replied. Thus I came to know he used to be a violinist, but had to leave his play due to life conditions and get into car repairing. Sure, I did not hesitate to include him in my film."

During the shooting there were not very pleasant moments, too. In one of the villages, the villagers are making matagh (lamb sacrifice) and decide to honor the foreign guests by sharing the sacred meat with them. But the reaction of the foreigners to that invitation shocks them. The French guests look at the slaughtered lamb with horror, shake their heads and categorically refuse to touch the meat.

"They all gathered around us, and the translator whispered that we could not refuse because would insult the people. They were looking at our plates with broth. We did not have an option. So we forced ourselves to have just one spoon of the soup and quickly drank a shot of vodka after it."

The movie is first of all for French people, Maite says. Indeed, perhaps the film would not say anything new to us, people living in Armenia: it depicts joys and sorrows that are well known to us. But according to Maite, the French reaction was total shock.

"And the Diaspora Armenians told me they had seen many films about Armenia made by the foreigners but in all of them only the good was shown and never the troubles."

The film was shown on different French channels. During the Year of Armenia in France, it will be broadcast in several regions.

After shooting the film Maite carried on with her work in France.

"About three years ago it was heavy times in France. It is still like that. We have lots of problems with unemployment and it is really hard, especially for freelance journalists like me. So I thought, why not to move to Armenia? Forever. So I sold my house, car, left my job, and now I am here."

Foreigners come in Armenia for long stays mostly on UN or other projects. Here they are provided with a place to live and a well-paid job. Some stay because the marry Armenians. Others come to travel.

But I had never before heard of someone who had come to Armenia to escape problems elsewhere.

Maite works here for the newspaper France-Armenie, which is run by Armenians living in France. Maite is the only non-Armenian and Armenia-based journalist at the newspaper.

"Here everybody thinks that all the foreigners are extremely rich," Maite laughs, "If one kilo of strawberries costs 1,000 drams for the locals, for me it costs 2,000 drams. Here people are surprised I smoke Garni and not some firma cigarettes. They are surprised that I go to the market and cook for myself, claiming that the French people eat in restaurants."

"And one thing is very funny here. Once I had problems with my health, so I went to see a doctor. You cannot imagine how much I worked on those few sentences which I was going to say to him. I told him what I my complaint was in almost ideal Armenia. And he opened his mouth and spoke to me in Russian! He didn't even know Armenian. He was so surprised I didn't understand him. It was not the only case. A woman once asked me, how come the whole world speaks Russian and you do not?"

"I like the life here. And I am saying this not as a very rich foreigner who visits Armenia, travels to all the wonderful places, doesn't come across any trouble, and not as an Armenian from the Diaspora. In fact, they don't know the real Armenia. I live here, I'm aware of the problems. Sure, you have a lot of them here. I don't like many things about Armenia. For example, the absence of every rule, especially traffic rules. I don't like Armenians' love of showing off. Armenia is considered a poor country and France a rich country. But walking on the streets in Paris you'll find only one posh car out of five, and here you'll see four of them out of five. Also I don't like the dirty streets. I don't like the fact that they ask money for everything.

But I also notice the values which are invaluable to me. Here people do not devote their lives to earning money, as it is in France.

Here I am familiar with my neighbors; if I have some problem I always can go to them. Sometimes we drink coffee together in the morning."

By the way, when I was going to Maite's place the first time I asked her to explain to me only the approximate whereabouts of the building she lives in. I thought I'd be able to enter any shop nearby and they would tell me how to get to her apartment. I was right.