A Story of People in War and Peace

Starting in 1988, a fierce battle raged between the two neighbouring states of Armenia and Azerbaijan (until 1991 part of the Soviet Union) over Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1994, an armistice gave control of Karabakh and the Azeri territory in-between to Armenia. Director Vadan Hovhannisyan shows the footage he shot as an independent war reporter on the front 12 years ago. He runs across the battlefield with a shaky camera, under a fierce shower of bullets. Scrawny soldiers with sunken eyes spend their days smoking, waiting and taking cover in trenches. Fallen comrades are carried down forest paths. Then, Hovhannisyan revisits the soldiers now, bringing prints of stills and frontline footage on his laptop. Although they have put on some weight, many of them are “victims of the peace,” as Hovhannisyan calls it in his voice-over.