The Royal Movie Fee (RFC) of Jordan withdrew its submission of a Jordanian-Armenian filmmaker’s documentary about Artsakh for the 97th Academy Awards’s Finest Worldwide Movie class final week, citing “diplomatic pressures.”
Director Sareen Hairabedian’s My Candy Land (2024), a grim coming-of-age story following an 11-year-old ethnically Armenian boy named Vrej within the aftermath of the Second Artsakh Conflict, was withdrawn in an alleged effort to nurture the rising ties between Jordan and Azerbaijan, as initially reported by Deadline.
“We reached out to the Film Commission for an explanation, and they told us that they’ve been in the process of trying to appeal against the decision issued by the Jordanian Foreign Ministry after complaints and pressure from the Azerbaijani embassy,” Hairabedian defined.
She famous that the RFC had been very supportive of the movie from the beginning, and even supplied financial help for the challenge in 2021 by way of its Jordan Movie Fund initiative.
“We were told that the decision was made from a government order, and RFC’s hands were tied as there was no space to negotiate or appeal anything,” Hairabedian continued.
Vrej, the eldest of three siblings, along with his members of the family
My Candy Land premiered mid-June on the Sheffield DocFest in England earlier than debuting in its house nation on the RFC-produced Amman Worldwide Movie Competition, the place it received three awards within the Arab Function Documentary class. Upon its screening and subsequent choice because the Jordanian entry for the Finest Worldwide Movie class on the Academy Awards, Azerbaijani media shops started lambasting the movie as slander and anti-Azerbaijani propaganda.
The filmmakers acknowledged to Hyperallergic that My Candy Land had been banned from screening in Jordan following strain from Azerbaijan after the movie pageant.
Aykhan Hajizada, spokesperson of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Overseas Affairs, mentioned the federal government entity “welcomes” the choice to droop the movie’s screening in Jordan in a press assertion, claiming that the documentary is “against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan.”
Hajizada additionally acknowledged that “there is no question of any pressure here” close to the RFC’s declare surrounding the withdrawal. “It was the independent decision of the Jordanian Royal Film Commission not to submit the film for the ‘Oscar’ award and to stop the screening of the film in Jordan,” he concluded.
Neither the RFC nor the Jordanian Overseas Ministry didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Vrej appears at an un-detonated missile jutting from the bottom in Artsakh.
In an interview with Hyperallergic, Hairabedian identified the “many parallels between what happens inside the film and what has surrounded the film in terms of its release,” referring to documentary protagonist Vrej’s displacement from Artsak (also referred to as Nagorno-Karabakh) in 2020.
The filmmakers added {that a} now-teenaged Vrej and his household have since evacuated Artsakh after the state’s dissolution in 2023 following Azerbaijan’s offensive assault, throughout which over 100,000 ethnic Armenians had been pressured out.
“In a way, it reminds me of what’s happening to us with every roadblock as we go through getting this film exposed and shown,” she continued. “This kind of censorship should not live into the day and age, especially when it’s really stories about the basic human rights of children who are just wanting to be living like children.”
However, Hairabedian mentioned that the Academy has since accredited My Candy Land‘s qualifications to enter in the Best Documentary Feature Film category, with an Academy Award-qualifying premiere at Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles on November 29.
“We are deeply grateful to the Academy for allowing the film to qualify,” Hairabedian said. “As documentary filmmakers, the censorship that we faced, compels us more than ever to share Vrej’s story, which displays the experiences of numerous youngsters around the globe at this time, who should dream freely with out the specter of conflict and battle.”
The Academy didn’t instantly reply to Hyperallergic‘s requests for remark.
Over in New York Metropolis, My Candy Homeland is screening in-person and on-line by way of DOC NYC this coming weekend Hairabedian and Hourani will probably be current for a Q+A session after the primary screening on Friday evening, November 16, at Village East by Angelika.
