What’s it like to come back of age below fixed risk of struggle? Director Sareen Hairabedian’s poignant documentary “My Candy Land” follows an ethnic Armenian teen named Vrej Khatchatryan from the small village of Tsaghkashen within the Martakert area of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Battle, displacement and exile colour every part in his and his prolonged household’s lives. Vrej and his friends are raised in a martial ambiance, from their classes in school and navy camps, to the video games they play, the garments they put on and the songs they sing. Artfully combining lyrical pictures that she shot with information footage, Hairabedian (herself of combined Armenian-Palestinian-Jordanian heritage) captures an indoctrination that, sadly, appears destined to maintain the state of affairs intractable from technology to technology.

With the worldwide information full of the bloodshed within the Center East and the Ukraine-Russia battle, comparatively little time has been spent on what’s occurring within the semi-autonomous area of Nagorno-Karabakh, and its unresolved territorial points. Hairabedian supplies onscreen textual content at first to supply context. We be taught that the mountainous enclave between Armenia and Azerbaijan has lengthy been residence to ethnic Armenians who shaped a majority of the inhabitants. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the Armenian inhabitants there declared independence — a standing not acknowledged by the remainder of the world — resulting in persevering with wars with Azerbaijan, which seeks sovereignty over the territory. The ethnic Armenians residing there, dedicated to their homeland, name it Artsakh.

After we first see Vrej in 2020, he’s 11, residing in a spot so small — simply 150 folks — that he jokes he’s associated to half of them. He’s the oldest of three youngsters, born to some whose participation in a mass wedding ceremony in 2008, opens the movie. The priest who officiates the marriage declares that the offspring of the 700 {couples} he has blessed will repopulate the realm and combat to take care of the homeland. A sensible, delicate, questioning lad, Vrej is born right into a heavy future.

Vrej’s college, the place the partitions are stuffed with images of fallen troopers, additionally inculcates blind love for the homeland. The children be taught that the maps of their a part of the world are topic to frequent change and struggle might get away at any second. A navy officer, who involves the varsity to show the youngsters about combating, notes that it’s basically a kindergarten for troopers. The pupils settle for that by residing in Artsakh, they’re all thought of troopers as a result of that’s what the state of affairs calls for. Nowhere do you hear dialogue of every other answer to the territorial disputes aside from combating.

Over the course of the three years that Hairabedian follows the Khatchatryan household, they’re displaced from their land twice. In 2020, Vrej’s father, Artak, who like a lot of the males within the village wears navy fatigues, stays behind to combat. In the meantime, life goes on as standard for the remainder of the Khatchatryan clan, in a house some eight hours away from Tsaghkashen. As the ladies prepare dinner and clear, the children play struggle video games with improvised weapons. When Vrej’s maternal grandmother Angela celebrates her 57th birthday, he steps right into a patriarchal position, proposing a toast and assuring the others that Artsakh will prevail and misplaced lands might be recovered.

By the point Vrej reaches 13, he holds fewer certainties. He’s realized from navy camp that combating isn’t enjoyable. There, Hairabedian captures a heartbreaking scene of the male campers herded to a lake and allowed a quick second within the water. Vrej, enraptured, is splashing fortunately like the child he’s, however by no means completely allowed to be, solely to be rudely directed to get out by one of many troopers.

Within the movie’s closing dialog, Hairabedian finds the right ending as Vrej asks her, “What’s going to occur to the hero of the movie on the finish?” It’s a query to which solely time can inform, however given his training and socialization, the reply appears bleak.