A walk through a film · Goris, Armenia, January 2023
The Blockade
Sixteen children went to watch a song contest and could not go home. Thirty days in a hotel in Goris, and the day Nare came to visit.
Entry one · Two days only
Sixteen children from Artsakh came to Yerevan for Junior Eurovision on 11 December 2022. They packed for two days.
The next morning they set off home. Near Shushi the road was closed. They stopped in Goris, the last town before the Lachin Corridor, and waited.
Entry two · Today, today
They lived at the Mirhav Hotel. Every morning someone said the road would open today.
After a week they stopped saying it. They hoped to be home for the New Year. They saw it in at the hotel.
It is already 31 days you are not seeing your son. It is a jubilee today!
Field note · The phone calls
Back home the kindergartens had closed. There were no nappies. Noodles and oil were coming by food stamp.
The children called their parents several times a day. The parents did not tell them how bad it was. Their friends did.
Entry three · Nare comes to Goris
Nare sang for Armenia that night in Yerevan. The children had come to cheer her on. Now she came to them.
It was her first time in Goris. It snowed on the way in, so she never saw the town from above. Within twenty minutes they were singing together.
When I looked at them, I had an impression that we have known each other for a thousand years.
Entry four · A concert on the road
The next day we carried a piano out to the road towards Lachin. A crane set it down in the snow.
Then the children played. For an audience of fields, a fence and a gas pipe. And for anyone in Europe who might be watching.
Are oil and gas more valuable than the life of a child?
Even if the road is opened for two hours, we will definitely go. Let them block it again. I will be on my soil.
Entry five · The film
End of the walk
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