“The Refugee” The Making, The Watching and The Future

“Spacing Migration, Sizing Conflict: The Think Thing” Youth Exchange International Project held in Kobuletti, Georgia on 16-25 September, needed a movie from each participant country – Armenia, Belgium, Georgia and Spain. A 15-minute film was to be made to describe and to show the migration issues in these countries.

The Armenian team decided to focus on the issue of refugees in Armenia as we viewed it as the hottest and the more up-to-date sub-topic among the issues under consideration. We started work having many heroes and personages. Thus we started by interviewing migrants who faced serious problems and difficulties in their lives. The majority of the refugees in Armenia are those who moved to Armenia from Azerbaijan during 1988-1992 Karabakh Conflict.

The Armenian group interviewed refugees Artur Garayants, Aida Sargsyan, Eduard Petrossyan, Siran Poladyan. (They all live in the same building and have had to face similar problems connected with housing and work for over 20 years. Right now they have to face serious difficulties concerning their property rights, lack of judicial support at court etc.). Eleonora Avanessova who now lives in a social building of “Mission Armenia”, and Tatyana Dashyan, social worker at “Mission Armenia”.

Having more than 2 hours’ material for the film, the Armenian group started to work on editing. At first we went through the whole material trying to choose the best way to bring all the interviewees together in order to illustrate the problem more fully and in an interesting way. However we soon found out that the old lady – Eleonora Avanessova is the best character for the movie, as she could be a kind of a generalized image of people who saw the hardships of war and its results and problems that Armenian refugees still face. In addition she is a lively person, very active and positive. Her life story involves love, family, tragedy, war, resettlement and struggle for life. It’s a story full of loneliness and optimism.

We wanted to keep the interview as natural as possible, trying not to have too many cuts and focusing on the parts that better illustrate the issue as well as her nature.

The 14:31-minute movie was called “The Refugee”. It gained the approval of the Youth Exchange participants of all countries despite the very humble means used for shooting. It involved humour and cheered up the viewers a lot.

The film is invited to participate in the annual International Film Festival “One Minute, One Shot”.

Part 1.

Part 2.

This project was made possible thanks to the support of Jint & the Youth in Action Programme from the European Union.