“There Was, There Was Not” Helmer Emily Mkrtchyan in Artsakh War Document

Director Emily Mkrtchyan didn’t know she’d be making a war documentary when she embarked on her nearly decade-long feature film. It was there, it wasn’t there. What began as a project intended to explore the lives of four disparate women in post-conflict Artsakh changed almost overnight as the long-beleaguered breakaway state, sandwiched between Azerbaijan and Armenia, became a site of ethnic cleansing of its majority indigenous Armenian population following a major escalation in a dormant conflict.

“It was all completely confusing and scary,” the documentary director told Deadline in an interview. “And at that moment, I realized that the film we were making would definitely change, but it took several years to understand what that meant, so I stayed through the 45 days of the war.”

In the latter half of 2020, as international borders slowly reopened, Mkrtchyan was preparing to wrap up shooting the film. The day before she returned to the United States, war broke out after the Azerbaijani attack. “It was completely serendipitous and shocking that I was there with the camera when it happened,” she says.

It was there, it wasn’t there – which had its world premiere at the True/False Documentary Film Festival last year and will continue On display in some US cities until November Released on October 10 – it takes its name from the traditional introductory phrase in Armenian folk tales, a corollary to the English form “Once Upon a Time”. Through still shots of the majestic Armenian highlands, the documentary makes a concerted effort to trace the deep-rooted myths of this ancestral land before delving into its themes.

“In the years that followed, it was really hard as an artist, as a director, to feel responsible for creating a story or creating some kind of meaning from that experience,” Mkrtchyan recalls of the shoot. “And for me, that experience was watching Siranush and Sose and Gayane and Sveta in that unbelievable moment in their lives… It took a really long time to try to figure out what we’re doing when we tell stories, and how that can still have power, even if it feels like all our power has been taken away.”

This doc was born in part from a short film Mkrtchyan previously released in 2018, motherlandabout the women in the capital, Stepanakert, who served with them Halo trusta non-governmental organization that works to remove landmines and explosives in conflict areas. It was through this project, and her time divided between Armenia, Artsakh, and the United States, that she learned about this Cyranush Sargsyan, teacher turned freelance war correspondent; Jayani Hambardzumian, feminist activist; Sos Balasanian, rising judo star and world champion; and Sveta Haroutunyan, HALO deminer.

“The film is not meant to garner sympathy or for others to watch and think of these women as victims,” ​​Mkrtchyan asserts, “because I learned a lot from these four women about survival and resistance and resilience. I think the film is trying to tell us that these women have something to teach us. They’re not there for us to feel bad about; we can be angry about what happened, and we can understand that it was unfair.” Big, but it’s not meant to flatten them as human beings.

To this end, Mkrtchyan, as an Armenian in the diaspora, was aware of the “different privilege” she brought to the material, and chose to keep the film grounded in reality and away from sensationalism. As such, the director made “very deliberate” choices to include moments in which she crosses the boundaries between director and subject, appearing on screen in intimate scenes to exchange an embrace or offer a few words.

“It was important for me to allow some of my connection to these women, and it was important for the viewer to understand that the person behind the camera really cared about them,” she explains.

Additionally, Mkrtchyan was careful to avoid the conventions of the war documentary subgenre, making a deliberate decision to film the “rupture” that occurred at the beginning of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and to break away from the “reality” of the film to conduct interviews.

“When we were in the editing phase, there was a lot of talk — the traditional version of this film would have started with bombs, so people would know there was a conflict coming and they could stay engaged and interested,” she says. “It was a very deliberate choice to spend the first 40 minutes of the film in Artsakh, in a place that, of course, was not ideal, because all these women were fighting for something different, but it was also very beautiful in its own way.”

The women’s distinct and inclusive connection to their homeland — despite its conservatism and deep-seated misogyny, Sargsyan points out — is something Mkrtchyan admits she envied, as she “felt disconnected from the place where I grew up.”

“Their love for Artsakh was really evident… I was jealous of that,” she says. “There was something that really captivated me, which was knowing your connection to a place, and being able to stay there even though everything around you was kind of weak, and somehow that made you love it more.”

In keeping with the rich Armenian tradition of cross-generational storytelling – Mkrtchyan says: “I grew up on stories of genocide. I grew up on stories of ‘Be careful, be careful.’ I grew up on stories that say: ‘Land matters, family matters.’” The director wanted to explore, through the prism of war, the meaning-making of oral history.

“The experience of war, for me, was experiencing these things that I heard through the story, and it made me think: ‘What is the value of these stories? Why was it transferred to me? Why is it so important in my childhood? “Part of that is because they were passing on information, and they were also preserving something alive that had been lost to my ancestors,” she says.

The war officially ended on November 10, 2020, when Russia brokered a ceasefire agreement for Azerbaijan, which it used. Israeli-made cluster bombs are banned And other advanced munitions killed more than 5,000 people. Despite the presence of a peacekeeping force, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive on the sovereign territory in September 2023, displacing almost the entire population of Artsakh, some 120,000 people, to Armenia. Shortly thereafter, in January 2024, the disputed territory was officially dissolved and the Republic no longer existed. A Peace agreement Currently in effect between the two countries.

Mkrtchyan hopes that her film will be in coordination with other projects that advance “resistance to erasure” through “memory work.”

“It is difficult to live in the world and look around to see how many people have been forcibly displaced from their lands,” she says. “I want [the film] To keep it [this place] alive. And I want it to be really in solidarity with all the other struggles of other peoples who are fighting to survive on their land, so that we understand: why is this important, and what is the real danger? “There is a real risk of losing those places forever.”

For Sargsyan — currently registered at Human Rights Defense Program At the Nova School of Business and Economics in Carcavelos, Portugal – highlighting a yet-understudied conflict is “a way of life… I can’t not do it.”

“They didn’t hear me. I didn’t watch. I think one of the biggest, [most] Important part[s] The reason behind this film is that it allows us to watch, she explained in an interview, adding that the film stands against those who try to “destroy your past.”

On combating historical erasure, she says, “You feel insecure about your past, what you went through there. And sometimes you also start to wonder, ‘Maybe that wasn’t real.'”

Sargsyan says what was particularly “shocking” was the insinuation by other Armenians – whether government officials or civilians – that the people of Artsakh “did not fight” hard enough to protect their lands.

“We are extraordinary refugees, as if we were refugees in our own country, in our homeland,” she says of moving to Armenia, noting that “our love was unconditional for Artsakh” and “we did our best.”

“Now I live in one of [most] Beautiful cities in the world [in Portugal]But it’s like a movie: You walk in and you know, it’s not your life. “It will never be your life,” she explains.

Despite the “extremely painful” nature of the loss, Sargsyan says the Artsakhis now consider Armenia their adopted homeland, where work to protect their identity and history will continue.

“What we had, we have to preserve, especially when we have no access to Artsakh,” she says. “Every scene, every store, even every dog ​​- I don’t know – everything you see [this] The movie, it’s important. For me, it’s like a museum, because we’ll never be this way again. We have all changed. “We are not the same people, and we will never be in that environment.”