30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

In a long shot of a grand, barren, windswept winter landscape, a clattering white Zhiguli appears, driving along a straight dirt road between Lake Sevan and the Armenian city of Sotk. On board is director Daniel Kötter. It's hard to to explain where he is: mountainous Karabakh has been the object of a long-standing territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan for years. It is bisected by the border, a little further on, right at the disputed Sotk gold mine, now only partially in Armenian territory. The area, historically an ethnic Armenian-majority oblast (region) in Azerbaijani territory, is now officially part of Azerbaijan, but is still occupied by the Armenian military and de facto governed by the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Within it, ordinary people are afraid, forgotten, and alone. It speaks of the Azeris, nicknamed "the Turks", once peaceful neighbours and now enemies and thieves. Everything is far away: the mountains, the voices, and the faces. The hope of peace is very distant and nebulous, while escape is impossible. Of this place of conflict, at the border, Kötter decides to show us the background, what remains, and those who remain.

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  Daniel Kötter

  Daniel Kötter is a German theatre and film director, born in 1975. His works are born from the composition of experimental shots, documentaries and performance art. His performances are included in various international festivals, among these the Venice Biennale. Rift Finfinnee (2020) completes the film trilogy on urbanization. In previous films, he focused on the suburbs of Tehran (Hashti Tehran, 2017) and Cairo (Desert View, 2018). Landshaft (2023) participated in the Vision du Réel.