Join us for a public screening of the feature film Should the Wind Drop (2020) by acclaimed Armenian filmmaker Nora Martirosyan, who will subsequently speak about her work.
This screening is a special collaboration between the Netherlands Film Academy and the University of Amsterdam: UvA Film Club and the AMIA Student Chapter, which will moderate the conversation with Nora Martirosyan following the film.
Set in the self-proclaimed Armenian Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), within the territory of Azerbaijan, Should the Wind Drop tells the story of Alain, a French aviation auditor sent to assess the region’s airport, a modernist facility built in Soviet times, but out of use since 1990.Martirosyan brings her personal connection to Nagorno-Karabakh by faithfully portraying a landscape “at once very modern”, while also, “so ancient when I see the traces of human activity in the mountains over thousands of years”, according to Martirosyan.
The airport, both a symbol of isolation and a potential gateway to the outside world, plays a central role in the film. Any plane wanting to land in Nagorno-Karabakh is threatened by the ceasefire line, at the airport’s edge. With making the film, Martirosyan had hoped that the country, unknown to the world of cinema, could “begin to exist, maybe not politically, but cinematographically.” However, in September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against Artsakh, and all Armenians had to flee, turning the film into an instant cinematographic archive of Artsakh’s existence and its hope to reconnect.
