Germany's Wim Wenders and Iranian film-maker Dariush Mehrjui are to receive lifetime achievement awards at this year's Golden Apricot International Film Festival (July 13-20) in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Wenders' Cannes competition film The Palermo Shooting will be screened, while a retrospective of Mehrjui's film will show such films as The Pear Tree and The Postman.

The fifth edition of the Golden Apricot festival will be opened by Roman Balayan's new feature Birds Of Paradise (Raiskiye Ptitsy) which was screening in competition at the Moscow International Film Festival this week.

Apart from a sidebar dedicated to the writer William Saroyan and films based on his screenplays, the festival will stage a posthumous tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni with his wife Antonioni, the director of the Antonioni Fund Claudia Gabriele, and the photographer Pierro Marcelli in attendance for a film retrospective and exhibitions of Antonioni's paintings and Marcelli's photographs.

Other foreign guests expected to come to Yerevan include film-makers Atom Egoyan, Goran Paskaljevic, Catherine Breillat, and veteran Armenian director Artavazd Peleshyan.

A masterclass will be held by festival president Egoyan whose latest film Adoration will close this year's edition on July 20.

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