05/05/2017 - Belgian director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd’s fourth documentary is a poetic commentary on the open wounds of the Armenian people that will not heal

Nagorno-Karabakh was declared an independent republic in 1994, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and trench warfare between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Belgian director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd’s The Eternals [+see also:
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film profile] was showcased in competition at the Visions du Réel Film Festival. The film immortalises the day-to-day lives of the people living in a small area of the world, which falls between Armenia and Azerbaijan but is still not officially recognised as a republic. In this spectacular, poetic documentary, the director of Lost Land [+see also:
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film profile] and Drowned in Oblivion [+see also:
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film profile] reveals the emotional ties that link the feeling of limbo experienced by those living in Nagorno-Karabakh – which has a population of Armenian origin but is still not a recognised state – and the post-traumatic stress suffered by the survivors of the Armenian genocide. 

These Armenian survivors have been plunged into a state of profound grief, which is embodied by the word tsnorq in their language, meaning “to suffer eternal melancholy”, and which Vandeweerd explains with the use of a series of inserts interwoven with striking images of Nagorno-Karabakh’s frozen landscapes. Those who are suffering experience time very differently. For them, hours, days and years are drawn out. There isn’t a single minute of the day in which they stop waiting for the moment when they will be freed from this earthly ordeal. They are awaiting the time when they can die and become eternal. 

The Eternals isn’t looking to inspire compassion in its audience. Vandeweerd aims to describe the restless souls of the Armenian people, in particular those who escaped the genocide or Nagorno-Karabakh’s bloody war against Azerbaijan. This film makes for uncomfortable viewing; it is bleak and full of rage. It shows us a situation that allows us to better understand the desire felt by these individuals to die, without beating around the bush. The Eternals transports us into a limbo where time stands still, a place inhabited by ghosts waiting for the sweet arrival of eternity.

The film was produced by Cobra Films and Zeugma Films, with support from ARTE France – La Lucarne.

(Translated from Spanish by Beatrice Guarneri)