Snow on the hills above a border village, Mount Ararat on the horizon

Eight awards at seven international festivals · Official selection, Ethnografilm Paris 2024

The Art of Seeing, The Art of Remembering

A documentary by Sascha Klamp · 23 minutes · Armenia, 2020 to 2022 · Five Mountain Films

Festival laurels: Winner Best Direction, Toronto; Winner Best Documentary Short, Paris; Best Short Documentary, Hawaii; Best Editing, Rotterdam; Best Producer, Munich; Official Selection, Lebanese Independent Film Festival; Best Cinematography, San Francisco; Winner Best Social Justice Film, Vienna; Semi-finalist, Madrid; Official Selection, Ethnografilm Paris

Global online premiere · the full film

Saturday 5 December

Shown online in full for the first time, on this page. Two screenings, twelve hours apart, so families in Armenia and across the diaspora can each watch in their own evening.

Screening one20:00 Yerevan · 16:00 London · 17:00 Paris · 11:00 New York · 08:00 Glendale and Los Angeles
Screening two19:00 Glendale and Los Angeles · 22:00 New York · 07:00 Sunday in Yerevan
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Above: the trailer, 1 minute 25.

The film

One photograph of a village wall of memories becomes the thread between two Armenian border villages, their elders, their teenagers, and the families who left.

In December 2020, weeks after the war, I photographed a wall in a small village museum in Armenia. Weddings, funerals, commemorations: decades of faces pinned side by side. That single image became the protagonist of this film.

Over four journeys to the border villages of Khachik and Mets Masrik, the film follows the elders as they open their family albums and build a community archive, so that the village itself holds its memory. Alongside them, teenagers meet a single Polaroid through the eyes of social media, and ask what their own pictures will one day say about them.

It is a film about identity, memory and self under pressure. It is also a film about hope: what these young people see for themselves, and what education and community make possible. For the diaspora it carries one quiet question. What if my family had stayed?

An elderly couple stands in front of a wooden door, looking into the camera
A hand holds a strip of old black and white negatives up to the light
Two village elders lean in to look at scanned photographs on a laptop
Teenagers laugh and talk together on a bus
A hand lifts a Polaroid print from an instant camera
A stone church and village under snow, mountains behind

Awards and selections

Eight awards at seven international festivals

Awards

  • Best DirectionToronto Documentary Feature and Short Film Festival, 2023
  • Best Documentary ShortParis International Short Festival, 2023
  • Best Short DocumentaryHawaii International Film Awards, 2023
  • Best Social Justice FilmVienna Indie Short Film Festival, 2023
  • Best CinematographySan Francisco Arthouse Short Festival, 2023
  • Best EditingRotterdam Independent Film Festival, 2023
  • Best ProducerMunich Short Film Awards, 2023
  • Best EditorMunich Short Film Awards, 2023

Selections

  • Official SelectionEthnografilm Paris, 2024
  • Official SelectionLebanese Independent Film Festival, 2023
  • Official SelectionToronto and Los Angeles Documentary Feature and Short Film Festival, 2023
  • Semi-finalistMadrid Arthouse Film Festival, 2023
  • Semi-finalistFARO Concurso de Cinema Mediterrâneo, 2025
Sascha Klamp photographs on location in Armenia
On location in Armenia.

Director’s statement

What if my family had stayed? What would I do?

The film began with my wife’s Iranian and Armenian heritage, and with a wish to show our daughters where part of their family comes from. Its themes reach far beyond Armenia: memory, and how we hold on to who we are.

It grew from a single black and white photograph I took in December 2020, at the height of Covid, on my first visit to Armenia. Inside a small village museum hung a wall of photographs from village life: weddings, funerals, commemorations. At the time it seemed an ordinary picture. It became the heart of the film, the image itself as protagonist.

As we filmed, the questions sharpened. How do the elders carry memories of life before perestroika and glasnost? How do the young use images to shape who they are? And what part does the diaspora play? For Armenians, the community in Los Angeles matters like few others. The film hopes to start a conversation between diaspora families there and their peers in Armenia.

After seeing an early cut, the people of Khachik and Mets Masrik gave their permission not only to screen the film, but to share their stories more widely. As someone who is not Armenian, I am humbled by their trust.

Sascha Klamp is a London-based documentary photographer and filmmaker, with roots in social anthropology and ethnology. He holds an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography, with Distinction, from the University of the Arts London. More about Sascha

Credits

Director and producer
Sascha Klamp
Editor
Armen Mirakyan
Fixer
Stepan Adamyan
With
The people of Khachik and Mets Masrik
Production
Five Mountain Films, United Kingdom
Running time
23 minutes

Bring the film to your audience

A screening, then a conversation with the director.

For community centres, churches, schools, universities, festivals and boardrooms. In person or online, anywhere in the world.