Films Containing Overt Violence to Be Restricted on Air. National Assembly Approves Bill

The promotion of the criminal underworld through TV programs and films will be restricted. The National Assembly passed the draft law with 55 votes in favor and 23 abstentions, with no votes against.

From now on, similar programs and films will only be aired after midnight. The authors of the draft are the President of the Armenian National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, and the MP from the Civil Contract Party, Arthur Hovhannisyan. Hovhannisyan previously mentioned in a prior session that seeing criminals portrayed positively in these films, especially teenagers, may lead them to emulate these figures in their daily lives, distorting social relations.

The draft proposes to add the concept of “films and audiovisual broadcasts promoting criminal subculture” to the Law on Audiovisual Media, equating it with the already established concept of “films containing overt violence.” Both types of content are proposed to be banned between 06:00 and 00:00.

In case of violations, broadcasters will be fined 0.02 percent of their revenue, but not less than 400,000 drams.