“Shifting Focus from Political Agendas To the Real Faces of Conflict”: Sareen Hairabedian on Her DOC NYC-Premiering My Sweet Land

Admittedly, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) was not in my geographic vocabulary before this region in the Caucasus Mountains took centerstage at last year’s IDFA, when first-time filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan nabbed top prize for 1489. The heartbreaking doc details the Armenian director’s real-time, smartphone-shot search for her brother, a young student and musician who’d been conscripted into the most recent war over their disputed homeland. And now we have Sareen Hairabedian’s cinematic, Gotham-supported My Sweet Land screening DOC NYC (where Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not, which follows four women in Artsakh, is also playing). Starring a bright 11-year old citizen of Artsakh named Vrej, it’s a coming-of-age story spanning years, always with the multigenerational war as backdrop; and it’s made all the more poignant by the Armenian-Jordanian filmmaker’s insistence on witnessing the up-and-down journey through her young protagonist’s all-to-aware eyes. Just prior to the film’s DOC NYC (U.S. Competition) premiere on Saturday, November 16, Filmmaker reached out to the US-based Hairabedian, whose directorial debut, HBO’s We Are Not Done Yet, received a Best Documentary Short nomination at the IDA Awards back in 2018.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.