Alex Pazoumian first visited Talish, a village in the bitterly disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh, eight years ago. He was there as a photographer for Vice France. The village had recently been invaded by Azerbaijan during the Four-Day War in April 2016.
He returned in late 2019 to begin his documentary The Black Garden (screening this week at CPH:DOX and sold by Syndicado). He was there with his friends and crew members Fabien Faure, Sylvain Chaux and Adriano Cerone. They wanted to understand why families were coming back to the village despite the very obvious threat of further conflict.
The filmmakers spent a month in the village, observing the daily lives of the inhabitants.
“The families were proud to have returned, and oddly enough, they didn’t seem affected. It was as if they were accustomed to it, perhaps because the people of Karabakh are very resilient; they never show their weaknesses,” Pazoumian observes of the locals’ phlegmatic attitude.
The villagers had been away for two years and were gradually returning home. New houses were being built by the government to encourage them not to abandon the border region.
“I felt deep within me the importance of going there and making a film because this village and its inhabitants represented for me the soul and character of the people in this region, these fighters, “resistant” as I like to call them. I discovered that the main reason for their return was simple – who would take care of their grandparents’ graves if they didn’t come back?”
The Black Garden is dedicated to Pazoumian’s grandfather who died before the war, but had provided the director with the money to begin the first part of the shooting.
“My parents were extremely affected during the war, like all Armenians in the diaspora. This war awakened fears and anxieties that we have heard about since our childhood, stories from our grandparents who fled the Armenian genocide,” Pazoumian explains why the story had such a personal resonance for him.
Initially, Pazoumian had planned to make a film about the soldiers in the Talish barracks. This proved difficult so the team started filming at the village school instead. “It was then that I came across these two extraordinary kids [Samvel and Avo], and naturally, we started following them. Trust grew over the years. The filming lasted for four years, and by the end, they completely forgot about the camera, and we developed an almost brotherly relationship.”
Over the four years, the crew shot around 100 hours of material. They were filming in a community where war has become part of everyday life, something the people endure from generation to generation. “They’ve never known anything else. Their grandparents experienced war, their parents, and now it’s the younger generations. They’re unfortunately prepared for it, but they have an unshakeable determination.”
The director was in Paris during the autumn of 2020 when the village was attacked again. He had no news of Erik [one of the film’s main protagonists] and thought he was dead.
“I immediately went to Yerevan during the war, and that’s when Erik wrote to me and told me to come see him at the hospital. That’s when I found out he had lost his right leg.”
The film starts with numerous sequences involving children, but towards the end, it focuses more on Erik, the young wounded soldier.
“The children bring a sense of lightness to this terrible conflict. Their spontaneity touches us more than the adults, I think. Sometimes I staged certain actions because I’m interested in fiction, but always scenes that Erik experienced in his life. For example, the boxing – Erik usually boxes, and we specifically went there again to shoot. I managed to get close to him because he knows my intentions are sincere, and I’ve been following him before the war, during the war, and afterwards. There has always been genuine respect between us, and that continues to this day,” Pazoumian explains his approach.
The idea of this film was to show the war solely through the eyes of the characters. “War is omnipresent in their daily lives. They will never be able to forget, how can one forget their hometown? However, they move on with life at a frantic pace. Within a few months, Erik was already standing up, refusing any medical help and medication. And today, he’s ready to fight again if necessary.”
On camera, the kids seem remarkably unaffected by their experiences but deep down, Pazoumian believes, “the wound is terrible. They seek refuge in their video games, perhaps to escape their reality, knowing that their future will likely be darkened by new wars.”
In making The Black Garden, the director hopes to bring fresh attention to a war the media has largely ignored.
“Today the film has archival value because it was shot in places that no longer exist or are completely destroyed; In my opinion, the world turned a blind eye because Europe has economic and gas interests with Azerbaijan, and with [Turkish leader] Erdogan constantly threatening Europe. It’s not just a conflict between two countries; this conflict involves Iran, Russia, and Turkey as well. It’s a powder keg. Armenia has been threatened by Turkey for over 100 years, and we still see it today,” Pazoumian observes. He acknowledges his film won’t change much, but still hopes it will leave a marker for “future generations.”
Yes, there were dark and traumatic moments for the director during the making of the documentary. It was “terrible” to see Erik lose his leg. The young man who appears at the beginning of the film with Erik in the church was killed during the conflict. The filmmakers learned they themselves were in danger in Talish because the village was within sight of enemy snipers.
Pazoumian financed the initial part of the filmmaking on his own because he didn’t have time to secure backing in the conventional way; Clara Vuillermoz later came on board as producer. She found the sales agent Syndicado. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with this distributor who has believed in our film from the beginning,” the director says.
Now, Pazoumian is working on his first feature-length fiction film set in the Gypsy community in southern France. He is also preparing a photo book about his experiences in Nagorno Karabakh since 2016.
