[1] Participants included some of the most highly acclaimed figures of world cinema - such as Marco Bellocchio, Tonino Guerra, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Godfrey Reggio and Artavazd Peleshyan, who were honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards.

More than 110 foreign guests attended the festival, which included filmmakers, actors, producers and distributors.

The international juries, headed by Moritz de Hadeln (Feature Competition), Godfrey Reggio (Documentary Competition) and Arsinee Khanjian (Armenian Panorama), awarded the following prizes: Golden Apricot 2006 for the Best Feature Film to Hou Hsiao-hsien for his film Three Times, (Taiwan/China/France); Golden Apricot 2006 for the Best Documentary Film to Workingman's Death by Michael Glawogger, (Austria); and Golden Apricot 2006 for the Best Film in "Armenian Panorama" to The Dwellers of Forgotten Islands by Hrant Hakobyan, (Armenia).

[1] The Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival (GAIFF) (Armenian: «Ոսկե Ծիրան» Երևանի միջազգային կինոփառատոն) is an annual film festival held in Yerevan, Armenia.

The GAIFF is continually supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the RA, the Ministry of Culture of the RA and the Benevolent Fund for Cultural Development.The objectives of the festival are "to present new works by the film directors and producers in Armenia and foreign cinematographers of Armenian descent and to promote creativity and originality in the area of cinema and video art".