De Facto recommends

The Kartli Kingdom (2025) is an observational documentary about Kartli, a crumbling sanatorium in Tbilisi that became a home to refugees fleeing the Abkhazia war – a palace of life and death where a temporary refuge has endured for three decades, and dreams of a promised land slowly fade away.

Yasha, who used to be a devoted Soviet worker, is struggling to adapt to reality after the Soviet Union’s collapse - he prefers to continue his life in a state that no longer exists. Edgar Baghdasaryan’s tragicomedy Yasha & Leonid Brezhnev will be Armenia’s submission for the upcoming Oscars’ Best International Feature Film.

It has been more than 30 years since fighting broke out between Georgia and Abkhazia. Some of those whom the conflict displaced found refuge in a former Georgian sanatorium: the Hotel Metalurg. Now, they’re under pressure to leave again. Watch the documentary here.

In the regional capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, satellite imagery reveals hundreds of incidents of what appears to be ransacking across the city of Khankendi, known as Stepanakert to Armenians.

While Tatevik Khachatrian was forced to leave everything behind one year ago, Vasila Mammadova was hopeful that, for the first time in 30 years, there was a chance she might get everything back.

Moscow will consider any provocations against Russian peacekeepers and citizens in Transnistria is an attack on Russia.

Tens of thousands of people were going hungry in Nagorno Karabakh — but the International Red Cross faced growing obstacles as it tried to deliver help. Drawing on interviews, data about ICRC convoys provided by inside sources, and weeks of on-the-ground reporting, OCCRP has investigated how Azerbaijan obstructed their work.

More and more people are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. What exactly a deal would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting.

For years to come, its violent dissolution will loom large in the Armenian consciousness and reverberate across other majority-minority conflicts around the globe.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians fled the region after Azeri forces seized the territory after a lightning offensive.

While the conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh concluded with an Azerbaijani victory, resentments simmer on both sides, creating fertile ground for new violence.

The winners of IDFA’s 36th edition competition programs were announced at the Awards Ceremony taking place at ITA (Internationaal Theater Amsterdam) on Thursday November 16. 1489 by Shoghakat Vardanyan won the IDFA Award for Best Film.