Shoghakat Vardanyan’s ‘1489’ to be screened at Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

The 28th International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) will be held in the Czech city of Jihlava from October 25 to November 3. Ji.hlava IDFF is one of the key European festivals, and the largest festival of auteur documentary cinema in Central and Eastern Europe.

Shoghakat Vardanyan’s award-winning film ‘1489’ will be screened on October 27 in the off-competition program in the Constellations section, featuring carefully selected films that recently shone at important European film festivals.

The 76-minute film ‘1489’ will be shown at the Kino DKO cinema in Jihlava. Shoghakat Vardanyan will not attend the screening as he will present the film in China.

“On 27 September 2020, a second war over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out between the internationally unrecognised Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. During this forty-four-day conflict, the director’s younger brother, Soghomon, who had just completed his military service, disappeared in the middle of the war zone. In an attempt to cope with the fear and uncertainty that paralyzed her family for the next two years as they tried hard to find Soghomon, Shoghakat Vardanyan began to record everyday reality on her phone’s camera. A remarkably mature, harrowing and hopeful documentary debut from a director who had no previous experience with film, it proves that even the most painful loss can only be reconciled in the moment of closure,” the message on the festival’s website reads.