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BLOCKADE

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By Hakob MELKONYAN

Documentary - Post-Production 2020

For thirty years, Chinari’s inhabitants have been trying to survive the war between the Azeris and the Armenians and the difficult conditions imposed by the blockade. Among them, there is the Petrossian family. The film accompanies their daily life in their struggle for survival.

- Year of production
- 2020
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- ARMENIA, FRANCE
- Languages
- ARMENIAN
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 85 mn
- Director(s)
- Hakob MELKONYAN
- Producer(s)
- Jérôme AMIMER (Leitmotiv Production)
- Synopsis
- Young people walk several miles each day on their way to school, ignoring the danger of Azeri snipers. On the spot, villagers sell or exchange their meager crops for a little sugar, cereal, and rare medicines. The inhabitants have to look after themselves. Only the wounded or the sick are transported to the military hospital.
  In the village, many houses are empty or in ruins abandoned by their occupants. The Petrossians stay and work their land. Repetitive gestures and rare words. Then they have to prepare the meals. The mother spins sheep's wool while the son learns to use a rifle. The father is the guardian of the cemetery where the dead are buried in the fog to avoid enemy fire; and every month he has to join other volunteer soldiers to fight at the border posts.
  Sometimes when everything is calm, we hear the sounds of nature, the words of the Petrossians, the teachers with their schoolchildren, the military briefing before the fight, and finally, the conversations between young villagers who talk about the war that hasn’t stopped in thirty years. This is the life of the Petrossian’s, a life in an endless war.