Parts of a Circle was a joint Armenian-Azerbaijani documentary film series looking at conflict narratives as seen on each side of the Karabakh conflict. Three documentary films were made by two teams, one in Armenia and the other in Azerbaijan, working with a wider network of experts and associates.
Three hour-long films were produced over three years: The Road to War, The War and In Search of Peace. The whole trilogy was produced in Armenian, Azerbaijani, English and Russian.
The aim of the project was to address the lack of knowledge, especially among younger people, about the origins and history of the conflict. Another ambition was to challenge the one-sided narratives about the conflict promoted in many official media sources and education syllabuses, and the assumed objectivity of these narratives.
To do this, the films provided an alternative to one-sided propaganda by juxtaposing two narratives within each film. The best-known use of this technique is the Japanese film Rashomon, which depicts the same incident several times but from separate, subjective and contradictory perspectives. This invites the viewer to become aware of their own preconceptions and biases, and to question their own understanding of contested or controversial events.
Project leader Nouneh Sarkissian explained: “The idea emerged as a result of the relationships that the participants had built up from working together over many years. We decided to create a film, where the viewer would be exposed to two approaches, two stories, and try to bring them as close to each other as possible, and thereby to create a ‘circle’ forming the parts of both narratives.”
Problems with outreach led to Conciliation Resources later producing a fourth film, based on the materials in the original trilogy. This was needed to reach wider audiences and to mitigate risk for local partners. This summary film was titled Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict, and released in 2020 in English and Russian. The full trilogy was made available online later that year.
The Parts of a Circle film series is the only attempt to date at a jointly made comprehensive history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. It also provides an example of cross-conflict cooperation enduring through the most challenging of circumstances. The films became what was probably the best-known outcome of the EPNK consortium supported by the EU in the 2010–2019 period.
However, the project faced many problems, mainly related to the political context in which the filmmakers were working. Beginning in 2014 there was a crackdown on civil society in Azerbaijan, which led to a number of high-profile trials in 2015. Many NGOs had their bank accounts frozen, including project partners. Some of the prominent interviewees in the films were arrested, tried and imprisoned, and this created fears about what the consequences of showing the films might be for the Azerbaijani team. The trilogy was scheduled to complete in 2015, but was still in post-production in April 2016 when the ‘four-day war’ took place. It was decided to postpone formal public presentation of the films because of the risks for Azerbaijani partners and participants.
Project participant Aliya Haqverdi recalled: “Throughout the long years of this project, when the political atmosphere didn’t allow for a wider dissemination, I would have liked to give journalists I was working with a link to the films – as a factual source for them. We were thinking of different options for the distribution of the film, but kept going around in circles. By the time we had decided, some of the people featured in the film had not only been imprisoned in Azerbaijan, some had even been released already. Others, on the other hand, had died. For them, these films are a bridge to posterity.”
Despite these problems, a programme of more than 100 screenings to selected audiences in 2017–2019 meant that the films reached more than 1,500 people. They are now available online where they can reach a wider audience.
Find out more
Parts of a Circle: Nagorny Karabakh conflict documentary series, Conciliation Resources, May 2020: homepage for the films, with links to each.
Parts of a Circle: Making of the films, Conciliation Resources, 2019: film about the making of the film
Parts of a Circle film brochure, Conciliation Resources, May 2020: downloadable brochure.
Film reviews
Cavid Ağa, Review of Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict, Caucasus Edition, Journal of Conflict Transformation
Tigran Grigoryan, Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict: A Film Review, CivilNet, 14 May 2020
Rusif Huseynov/Murad Muradov, Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict (film review), Topchubashov Center
Blogs, reports and interviews
Dr Laurence Broers, Reframing the past: Armenians and Azerbaijanis face painful truths of the Karabakh war together, Conciliation Resources, May 2020
Parts of a Circle: the making of the films, Conciliation Resources, December 2019
Q&A with Laurence Broers: On “Rashomon” Approach to Karabakh, USC Institute of Armenian Studies, 27 February 2020
Joshua Kucera, Joint Armenian-Azerbaijani documentary on Karabakh released, Eurasianet, 12 May 2020
Aliide Naylor, A chronicle of the disputed history in the decades-old conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Modern Times Review
Yunus Abdullayev, How documentary film on Karabakh could foster peacebuilding between Azerbaijanis and Armenians, Eurasia Diary, 19 May 2020
Armenian and Azerbaijani filmmakers issue film about Karabakh conflict, Caucasian Knot, 13 May 2020
Parts of a Circle – joint Armenian-Azerbaijani film about Karabakh conflict published, JAM News, 12 May 2020
