Even in the high mountains - far from Covid-19 and face masks - the pandemic still poses a challenge for some families and threatens their livelihood. The Shamoyan family is one of them. Every year they take their animals to graze and spend 4 months 2800 m above sea level in the tents. Current crisis affects their business as well. 

The repetition of war is the central theme of this film. For children growing up in Armenia in the 1990s, the Karabakh war was something from the past, stories their parents told. 

Now, 30 years later, they experienced war themselves. 

Ani Torosyan and Astghik Gaudyan documentented the latest war on the homefront, witnessing life that seemed like a terrible flashback, scenes from the stories they heard as children brought to life in front of their eyes. 

Even now, after the war, it’s consequences linger, impacting people’s lives. The new war left new traumas and a new fear: the fear of repetition. 

The filmmaker looks back at 2020 and asks how an emotional roller coaster of a year impacted her life.

POV is a short film made out of mobile footage shot randomly during 2020, a challenging year. Ani Torosyan documented her everyday experience during the pandemic and the war in Armenia, reflecting on dramatic changes she witnessed and assembling them into a first person narrative.

Director’s note

Point of View (POV) is a monologue about my inner thoughts, addressed to you, to the world, and even to me. I documented the year 2020 as I saw it: misty, dark, upside down.

POV reflects how I felt  throughout the year. It shows what changed over the course of 12 months - how the offline world became a new luxury, “negative” prevailed over the “positive,” the abnormal suddenly became routine, and we got used to the things that used to seem unreal.