Concept art: Adam at his father's desk under a lamp, holding an old photograph
A Kinodaran original series

88

He went looking for his father.
He found the past.

Անցյալը դեռ չի փլուզվել
Format
10 × 30–35 min
Genre
Mystery / Sci-fi thriller
Language
Armenian · English dub
Set in
1988 · 1994 · 2026
Station: Leninakan · Armenian SSR15.11.1988 → 07.12.1988 · 11:41
Logline
When a journalist searching for his missing father slips into Armenia in 1988, he must confront two versions of the same man and a secret experiment that may cause the coming earthquake, before his own son grows up without him.
Key art poster: 1988, two men in winter coats above Yerevan
Key art
Prologue
Yerevan · 15 March 1994 · Night

“I can’t look at him.”

Adam is seven years old when he hears his father’s last sentence through a crack in the door. That night Hakob Tadevosyan disappears.

His mother Karine has a stroke soon after. For thirty years she does not speak or walk. Adam grows up to become an investigative journalist who can open anyone’s secrets except his own. He has promised his wife he will stop looking. His editor and mentor, Vigen, has just killed his article on Armenia’s missing persons.

The story

Three weeks
before the earthquake

Concept art: the village house at night, the tunnel opening in the garden below a lit window
The search · 2026

A call about his father’s papers

The day after his mother’s birthday, a stranger named Lilit calls. Her family has come back from America, and their village house is full of Hakob’s notebooks and equipment. Against his family’s wishes, Adam stays to read them.

Vanik, the old neighbour, looks at Adam as if he has seen his face before. That night a dog barks in the garden. The dog died decades ago. Adam follows the sound to a tunnel, climbs down, and comes out beside the same house. Now a family lives in it. It is 15 November 1988.

The village house and the tunnel
II
Soviet Armenia · 1988

A man with no papers in a city he knows by heart

Young Vanik drives him to Yerevan. Adam pays with his silver ring. Forty years later Vanik will still be wearing it.

Dazed by the city of his childhood, Adam is hit by a car. At the hospital he gives his real name and slips away from the militia, leaving behind a wallet with a 2026 receipt for a scarf. A copy of Pravda at a kiosk confirms the date.

He finds the young Vigen and wins him over by describing the secret article Vigen burned. At a party with Vigen’s friends, Artur announces he has bought everyone tickets for a concert in Leninakan on 7 December. Adam shouts at them not to go.

Concept art: the older Hakob grips Adam's arm in a dark Leninakan doorway
Leninakan · 1988

Two fathers in one city

Vigen learns what is coming and becomes Adam’s ally. His friend Gayane forges him a Soviet passport. At the hospital Adam meets his mother, young Karine, when he offers blood: they share the same rare type, AB negative. He tells her he is a journalist who writes about scientists, and she tells him where Hakob works.

Outside the Hotel Shirak in Leninakan, Adam starts following his father. In a dark street someone grabs his arm. It is Hakob, six years older. He is the man who vanished in 1994, and he has been hiding in 1988.

December 7 is approaching.

Leninakan · Adam and the Hakob from 1994
Narrative structure

One family.
Three years.

1988

The countdown

Adam enters the weeks before the earthquake. Young Hakob works on a classified experiment, unaware that his older self and his grown son are trying to stop it.

1994

The disappearance

Guilt has consumed Hakob. He crosses back into 1988, leaving a wife and two sons behind. This is the father Adam has spent his life searching for.

2026

The search continues

Anna, eight months pregnant, looks for her missing husband. Hakob’s papers, a ring, a green birth certificate: ordinary objects connect her search to events unfolding decades earlier.

The window · 22 days
The conspiracy

The time tunnel has a cause

The older Hakob confesses everything.

КГБ СССР · Дело № 07-12/88Erevan · Leninakan · Moskva

Prometey

Project «Прометей» · Physicist: H. Tadevosyan · Handler: Maj. Sergey
Concept art: KGB generals around a long table under maps of the USSR and North America
Фото 1 · Moscow, closed session. The General insists the Armenian test goes ahead on 7 December.
The device

Hakob designed a machine that can deliver enormous energy to any point on Earth. The KGB built it into Prometey. Officially it is research. In a closed meeting in Moscow, its real purpose becomes clear: a tectonic weapon that could make an attack on America look like a natural disaster.

The test

As relations with the West thaw, Gorbachev could shut the programme down. The General decides to go ahead at any cost. The Armenian test is set for 7 December 1988. It will go wrong, and that failure is the earthquake.

The tunnel

The energy of the disaster tore open an Einstein–Rosen bridge. It always leads to the same day: 15 November 1988. Hakob has gone through four times, and four times he has watched 7 December happen.

The rule

Time will not let Hakob come near his younger self. It may let Adam. To stop Prometey from the inside, the son has to earn the trust of the young father who doesn’t know him.

Concept art: Hakob's face split by a crack, the 1988 and 1994 versions of one man
One man, two lifetimes

Two Hakobs

Vigen plants a newspaper profile of a brilliant young radiophysicist from Leningrad named Adam Tadevosyan. The older Hakob coaches Adam on where and how to meet his younger self.

At the Aragil café, Adam leans over and gives young Hakob a word for his crossword. The older Hakob still remembers that word years later. Adam hands over a notebook of “his” research. In it, young Hakob finds the solution to a formula that has tormented him for months, and he reports it to his handler at once.

The knowledge meant to stop the experiment becomes valuable to the people running it.

Hakob-88 · Hakob-94
Characters

A son, a father,
and the father’s future

Concept art: Adam at his father's desk, holding an old photograph
The son

Adam Tadevosyan

Played by Samvel Tadevosyan
39 · 2026Investigative journalist

His most important case has never closed. Adam can challenge institutions and uncover other people’s secrets, but his father’s disappearance still turns him back into the child waiting at the door. The past gives him a chance to know Hakob as a man. Taking it puts Adam at risk of becoming the absent father he has spent his life trying to understand.

Concept art: Hakob's face split in two, the 1988 and 1994 versions
The father · two versions

Hakob Tadevosyan

Played by Nerses Avetisyan
Hakob-88 · 32Hakob-94 · 38Physicist

In 1988 Hakob is a physicist chasing a breakthrough on Prometey. The Hakob who arrives from 1994 is convinced his work caused a national catastrophe. Both exist in the same year. One pursues the breakthrough. The other wants to undo it. Between them stands a son who needs a father more than a confession.

Mother · 1988 & 2026

Karine

A hospital doctor in 1988, wary of her husband’s secrets and the stranger entering their lives. In 2026 a stroke has left her silent. When Anna brings her a document, she struggles to say one name: Adam.

Wife · 37 · 2026

Anna

Eight months pregnant and raising their six-year-old son, Vahe. When Adam vanishes she refuses to accept another temporary absence, and follows evidence that makes no ordinary sense.

Mentor · 70 · and his younger self

Vigen

Adam’s editor in 2026 and his first ally in 1988. He keeps five concert tickets that were never used. The KGB will test what his loyalty is worth.

KGB major · 30

Sergey

Prometey’s local handler. He opens a file on the Tadevosyans, then grants Adam clearance. Adam cannot tell whether he is the threat or the way in.

Moscow

Sasha

Sent by the General to oversee the site and watch Sergey. Moscow is determined to prove the weapon works.

Brother · 41

Edgar

Adam’s older brother, who wants the past left alone. In 1988 he is three-year-old Edgarik, his father’s only son.

Neighbour

Vanik

He drives a stranger to Yerevan in 1988 and is paid with a silver ring. In 2026 he still wears it.

Son · 6

Vahe

The child Adam is at risk of leaving behind, as his own father once left him.

Leninakan, now Gyumri · November 1988 · Everyone he meets is still making plans
The mystery

The past leaves evidence

Every change Adam makes in 1988 surfaces in 2026 as an object. Anna follows them like a detective.

Exhibit AAg 925

The ring

Adam pays for a ride in 1988 with his ring. In 2026 Anna sees it on the neighbour’s hand. He says he has owned it for decades.

1988 → 2026
Exhibit B96 pp.

The notebook

The older Hakob’s research, handed to his younger self. It solves the formula Prometey was waiting for.

1994 → 1988
Exhibit CForm No. 3

The green certificate

Among Hakob’s papers Anna finds a green Soviet birth certificate with an adoption document folded inside.

Found 2026
Exhibit D× 5

Five tickets

Concert tickets for Leninakan, 7 December 1988. Old Vigen keeps them in a drawer. None was ever punched.

1988 → 2026
Exhibit ELomonosov

The china

The family coffee service began as a gift Adam brought his parents in 1988. An ordinary object acquires an impossible history.

1988 → 2026
Exhibit FSealed

The envelope

A letter addressed to Anna, kept unopened by Karine for thirty-eight years.

1988 → 2026
Exhibit GShift

The crossword

One word Adam whispers at the Aragil café. Hakob carries it for the rest of his life.

1988 → 1994
Exhibit HUnstable

The tunnel

It brings Adam into 1988, then refuses to take him home. Hakob has theories about it, but no reliable control.

2026 → 1988
Season one · 10 episodes × 30–35 min

The season

Episodes 1–3

The call, the tunnel, 1988

01

A call about Hakob’s belongings takes Adam to a remote village house. Against his family’s wishes, he stays to search the papers. A dead dog’s bark draws him into a hidden tunnel. He emerges to find the abandoned house occupied by a family living in 1988.

02

Stranded in Soviet Armenia, Adam trades his ring for a ride, is hit by a car and escapes the militia. He turns to the young Vigen and proves he comes from 2026. An evening with Vigen’s friends brings warmth and political argument, until they plan a December 7 concert trip to Leninakan. Adam tells them not to go.

03

Vigen becomes an ally and a forged passport gives Adam a Soviet identity. He meets his young mother as a blood donor and follows a lead to Hakob in Leninakan. 2026Anna begins searching the village and notices Adam’s ring on the neighbour’s hand. In 1988, Adam follows his father, only to be confronted by an older version of the same man.

Episodes 4–6

Two Hakobs

04

Hakob reveals his journey from 1994, the truth about Prometey, and the tunnel that only ever opens onto 15 November. When it will not take them home, Adam poses as a radiophysicist from Leningrad. A crossword clue at the Aragil café and the older man’s notebook win young Hakob’s attention, and his handler Sergey wants to know more.

05

Invited home by young Hakob, Adam is recognised by Karine as “the donor”. He begs her to keep his secret. Learning about Karine’s future illness sends the older Hakob into a drinking spiral; a fight at the Ani restaurant ends with his arrest under his own name. Moscow orders Sergey to bring Adam into Prometey. 2026Anna finds a green birth certificate with an adoption document and rushes it to Karine. For the first time in thirty years, Karine speaks: “A…dam.”

06

Karine retrieves a husband who looks six years older than the man who left home that evening, and signs for him under his own name. The older Hakob tells her the truth about time and the disaster. She becomes an ally, still unaware that the stranger is her son. On a night bench, Adam tells his father what it was like to grow up with a father who drank. Hakob says the words Adam has waited thirty years to hear: “It’s not your fault.” Sergey interrogates Adam, grants him clearance and opens a file on the Tadevosyans. 2026Vigen tells Anna: “Adam is alive.” Alone, he looks at five unpunched tickets.

Confidential · contains the endingEpisodes 7–10
Episodes 7–9

Vigen disappears. The plan for December 7.

07

In Moscow, a closed meeting reveals what Prometey is for: a tectonic weapon aimed at the United States. Gorbachev could close the programme, so the General pushes it forward and sends Sasha to Yerevan to watch Sergey. Sergey abducts the young Vigen and interrogates him in a basement. 2026Old Vigen sees a photograph fall from the wall and shatter. The memories flood back. He goes down through the tunnel to 1988 and confesses to Adam and Hakob: “I gave you up.” In the basement, his younger self breaks.

08

Over dinner at the Ani, young Hakob mentions that he has one son, little Edgarik, and there will be no other. That is how Adam learns he was adopted. He is an orphan of the earthquake, born in Leninakan as Sargis Manukyan. He wants to run and save his real parents. The older Hakob convinces him that only stopping the disaster can save them.

09

Under Sasha’s pressure, Sergey has Vigen committed to a psychiatric hospital. Adam and the older Hakob plan to kidnap young Hakob so the older man can take his place at the test. Sergey stops them. When Adam tells him about the earthquake, Sergey reveals he is an American agent who has been slowing Prometey for years: “I’m on your side.” He learns from Hakob that the Soviet Union will fall in 1991 and passes it to Washington. The plan becomes a substitution, now with Sergey inside. Sasha orders young Hakob to spend the night of 6 December in the lab. Adam gives Karine a farewell letter for Anna, to be delivered in the future. 2026In Gyumri, Edgar finds the Manukyan names on the memorial wall. Karine hands Anna an envelope she has kept sealed for thirty-eight years. Anna reads the letter and goes into labour. The episode ends at 07:00 on 7 December.

Episode 10

December 7

10

One day, in two eras at once.

07.12.1988 · 11:41:00

Both Hakobs are at the Prometey test. Inside the lab, everything comes apart. Sergey orders young Hakob to start the device. At the last moment, with no other choice, Adam shoots his young father so he cannot load the antimatter capsule. With the young Hakob dead, the older Hakob dies too. The capsule falls from his hand and shatters, releasing a blinding surge of energy and light. 2026Anna gives birth.

Adam wakes in an unfamiliar place. He is back in Yerevan in 2026. But the country is still Soviet.

The history beneath the fiction

Spitak, 1988

At 11:41 on 7 December 1988, an earthquake struck northern Armenia. Spitak was almost completely destroyed. Leninakan, now Gyumri, lost much of the city. Gorbachev cut short his visit to New York, and the Soviet Union accepted large-scale Western aid for the first time since the Second World War.

Almost every Armenian family carries a memory of that morning. 88 treats it with care: the earthquake is never spectacle. It is the deadline the whole story runs toward, and the reason every warm kitchen scene in 1988 hurts.

11:41Local time
6.8Magnitude
25,000+Lives lost
38Years later, 2026
The emotional stakes

What a father leaves behind

Adam wants an explanation for a childhood shaped by absence. Hakob wants a chance to undo what he believes he has done.

Each man asks the other to understand a sacrifice the family never chose. Their reunion tests whether love can survive the truth about a parent. In the present, Anna and Vahe bear the cost of Adam’s search, and the same pattern threatens to repeat across another generation.

GuiltInheritanceChoice
Tone and visual language

An impossible story,
lived close

The camera

Stay close to faces, hesitations and domestic detail. Cold streets and institutional rooms contrast with the warmth of kitchens, lamps and shared meals. The same places feel familiar and wrong as the years shift.

The sound

A dog’s bark, a telephone ring, radio voices and the silence after an unanswered call carry the unease. Period music and dry, awkward humour give 1988 a lived-in warmth beneath the approaching danger.

Kitchen night
Tuff stone
Desk lamp
Leninakan sky
December 7
KGB file

The wonder of finding a parent again.
The dread of knowing what comes next.

For streaming audiences

Family drama with a genre hook

For viewers drawn to intricate mysteries, morally conflicted families and the chance to change history. The Armenian setting gives it a specific cultural memory. A son’s need to understand his father makes it universal.

Netflix

Dark

Family secrets revealed through encounters across time.

Hulu

11.22.63

A traveller faces the personal cost of intervening before a known historical event.

Netflix

Bodies

Parallel investigations expose a conspiracy across different eras.

Cast & creative team

Who makes it

Samvel Tadevosyan
As Adam

Samvel Tadevosyan

Armenian screen and stage actor. Starred in The Line and played Komitas in Songs of Solomon. His international credits include Jessica Woodworth’s Luka, which premiered at Rotterdam in 2023.

  • Luka2023
  • Chernobyl: Abyss2021
  • Songs of Solomon2020
  • Bravo Virtuoso2016
  • The Line / Life and Fight2016
Nerses Avetisyan
As Hakob

Nerses Avetisyan

His work spans Armenian film, television and theatre. He starred in Petros Hovhannisyan’s Recidive and appeared in Summer of 84. In 88 he plays Hakob at two points in his life, before and after the guilt that divides them.

  • A Winter’s Song2025
  • Summer of 842024
  • Recidive2021
  • Anatolian Story2020
  • For the Sake of Honor2020
Petros Hovhannisyan
Director

Petros Hovhannisyan

Directed the feature Recidive and the series Summer of 84. His work with Nerses Avetisyan continues in 88. He also directs and co-writes the forthcoming feature Just North of Joy Valley.

  • Recidive2021 · Director
  • Summer of 842024 · Director
  • Just North of Joy ValleyIn post
Mko Malkhasyan behind an ARRI camera
Director of photography

Mko Malkhasyan

Also credited as Miko Malkhasyan. MFA in cinematography from the AFI Conservatory. Feature films, documentaries and 3D cinema. Newport Beach Film Festival cinematography award for Nora.

  • A Winter’s Song2025
  • When Big People Lie2024
  • Cunningham2019
  • Nora2008
Rafael Tadevosyan
Producer · co-writer

Rafael Tadevosyan

Armenian producer across scripted film and television, including the crime series The Saint and the period drama Summer of 84. On 88 he produces and writes alongside Aram Khachatryan.

  • The Chess Player2025
  • 112025
  • Summer of 842024
  • The Saint 2: Blood and Dust2024
  • The Saint2023
88
Written by

Aram Khachatryan

Co-writer of 88. His other screenwriting credits include the forthcoming feature Just North of Joy Valley, directed by Petros Hovhannisyan.

  • Just North of Joy ValleyWriter
  • 88Co-writer
88 · Season one

How do you save your father without leaving your son?

10 episodes of 30–35 minutes. Armenian original language, English dub planned.

Presented by Kinodaran
Partnerships & investment
88@kinodaran.com kinodaran.com