Documentary Voices from the Armenian Highlands and Diaspora

The program opens with Motherland (Emily Mkrtchyan, 2019) and Sweeping Yerevan (Nairi Hakhverdi, 2020), both about women putting their lives on the line to provide for their families: one of them clearing mines in Nagorno-Karabakh, the other sweeping the streets of Yerevan in the middle of the night.

The second film, Tezeta (Aramazt Kalayjian and Garegin Papoyan, 2024), follows the migration of a group of Armenian musicians to Ethiopia, orphaned after the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which would have an everlasting impact on the Ethiopian music scene to this day.

The third in the line-up is reserved for Hishé (Anahid Yahjian, 2021) and Bon Voyage (Garegin Papoyan, 2021), the first, an evocative personal memoir of Nagorno-Karabakh, the second, an observational documentary about the Stepanakert Airport in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was kept alive, but had not been allowed to function since the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1990s.

The day closes with Those from the Shore (Tamara Stepanyan, 2017), a poetic depiction of the realities and pains of immigration, of living in between two worlds, while waiting in limbo for a final decision.

The curators of this program are Tina Bastajian and Nairi Hakhverdi.

• Organized by : Filmhuis Den Haag
• Main language: Engels
• Theme: Spreeek about Society
• Access: 12