Documentary 1489, directed by Armenian filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan, won Best Film in International Competition at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Deadline reports.
The film revolves around the disappearance of the director’s 21-year-old brother, Soghomon Vardanyan, who went missing in the early days of the renewed fighting in 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The awards were handed out on Thursday.
The award comes with a €15,000 cash prize. The jury members of the International Competition were Emilie Bujès, Francesco Giai Via, Tabitha Jackson, Ada Solomon, and Xiaoshuai Wang.
Jurors called 1489, “A film that acts as a piercing light that makes visible the vast hidden interior landscape of grief and creates a tangible presence from unbearable absence. Cinema as a tool of survival—to allow us all, to look at the things we would rather not see. And ultimately, an unforgettable example of cinema as an act of love.”
Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly won Best Director in International Competition for his film Life Is Beautiful, an account of how he became stranded in Norway while making his earlier
