My Sweet Land team determined to reach global audiences

Jordan’s government has withdrawn its submission of a film about Artsakh to the 97th Academy Awards for Best International Feature, citing “diplomatic pressures” from Azerbaijan. Yet Jordanian Armenian filmmaker Sareen Hairabedian and the team behind My Sweet Land are undeterred, working to ensure that the film reaches global audiences. 

My Sweet Land follows an 11-year-old boy named Vrej, whose idyllic childhood in Artsakh is disrupted by war and displacement. “The film is an extremely humanitarian piece that talks about the basic raw human rights of children to live on their land, to love home, to love family, to feel safe, to feel protected,” Hairabedian told the Weekly. “The film focuses on the details of life, the details of the land, the details of what the children do, what their daily surroundings are like, feel like. To remove all that and just look at this from a political lens negates all the life that the film is intended to show.”