Sunday, October 20
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham

GENOCIDE, DISPLACEMENT, AND FAMILY HISTORIES IN ETHIOPIA AND ARMENIA

THE MEDALLION by Ruth Hunduma (19 mins) 
1489 by Shoghakat Vardanyan (76 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)

Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. The penultimate screening of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled Double Bill and aimed at fostering South-to-South solidarity, features Ruth Hunduma’s The Medallion alongside Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 as part of an event exploring genocide, displacement, and family histories in Ethiopia and Armenia.

THE MEDALLION
Ruth Hunduma / 2023 / Estonia, UK / 19’ / English

Partially filmed in soothing 16 mm and featuring a heartfelt conversation between the filmmaker Ruth Hunduma and her mother about the latter’s experience of displacement, The Medallion movingly highlights the Ethiopian Civil War and Red Terror of the 1970s.

1489
Shoghakat Vardanyan / 2023 / Armenia / 76’ / Armenian with English subtitles

Shot primarily within her family home in the ethnically Armenian enclave of Artsakh, Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 is a deeply intimate, first-person account of her family’s attempts to locate her brother Soghomon, a soldier assigned the number 1489 after going missing in action in 2020, at the onset of the latest (and most devastating) cycle of Azerbaijani aggression, which culminated in the occupation of Artsakh in autumn 2023. Filmed using a phone, Vardanyan’s stripped-down documentary feature debut has the immediacy of war zone reportage, while also seeking grounding and solace in birds, her father’s wooden artworks, and the natural landscape. Awarded the main prize at IDFA, the world’s premier documentary film festival, 1489 signals the arrival of a major filmmaking talent, highlighting her homeland’s beauty as well as its history of genocide and resistance.

The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion featuring guest curators Anna-Maria Tesfaye and Alan Kessedjian, as well as the filmmakers Ruth Hunduma and Shoghakat Vardanyan.

CONTENT WARNING: Please note 1489 contains scenes depicting human remains.

Ruth Hunduma is an Ethiopian-Australian writer, director, actor and poet.

Shoghakat Vardanyan is a first-time Armenian filmmaker whose deeply intimate account of the 2020 Artsakh war, titled 1489, has been acclaimed at film festivals worldwide.