Montreal-based Lebanese–Armenian director Marlene Edoyan’s latest documentary asks what futures exist for ethnic Armenians in rural Georgia.

A Fire There (2026) traces the lives of three young men — Henrikh, Karlen, and Hakob — in the majority Armenian village Gamdzani (Gandza) in Georgia’s southern Samtskhe-Javakheti region.

While all three men come from similar backgrounds, they each have different dreams and goals: Henrikh wishes to study in Tbilisi and eventually become a member of government to bring effective change to his home; Karlen wants to be a migrant worker in Russia, viewing it as a place of wealth and opportunity; and Hakob simply wants to build a life with his long-distance girlfriend Monika in the village, seemingly content with his work at the local cheese factory. All of their families have pinned their own hopes on these young men, seeing in them a chance for happiness or personal success that they themselves never got.

Filmed between 2022–2024, the documentary covers a wide swathe of the young men’s lives as they each attempt to progress with their varying goals. Yet, despite the many months of filming, the film is not fast-paced — instead, it operates as a slow-moving, artistic look at the rural, pastoral life of the Armenian villages in Georgia, where the main industries revolve around sheep and agriculture.

In between beautiful, wide shots of the landscape and villagers at work in their surroundings — often accompanied by Mathieu Charbonneau and Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux’s captivating soundtrack — Edoyan films the young men struggling with their emerging individual identities.

Some of the most interesting conversations caught on camera occur in an abandoned Soviet-era milking factory. From the first, the location gives rise to a debate on the success of the Soviet Union and whether things are any better today in an independent Georgia. From there, the discussion goes on to the changes in migrant work, Russia no longer the only attractive option when compared to Europe. As one of the young men puts it, ‘migrant work [has gotten] sophisticated’.

Seasons pass slowly as one by one the larger friendship group dissolves as the men move away to find their fortunes elsewhere.

For Henrikh, his time in Tbilisi during the 2024 foreign agent law protests awakens a new political impetus, one that his friends back in the village struggle to connect with. Back in the Soviet-era factory, the conversation this time revolves around Georgian politics and what choices they have. While Henrikh urges his compatriots to vote out Georgian Dream in the then-upcoming parliamentary elections, his friends ask, ‘Can we trust the newcomers to set up factories here?’, exemplifying the influence of economics in rural Georgia.

Beyond the focus on the three young men, Edoyan also manages to subtly capture the patriarchal gender dynamics of the village. Women in the film are forever in the background, never given true identities themselves or even a sense of a future other than to be a wife and mother. In one particularly poignant scene, a few young Armenian girls are baptised, after which the priest blesses them, wishing that they be grandmothers to big families. At this point, one girl turns to the camera, with a miserable look on her face — that the sum of her worth be solely tied to the fruit of her womb.

Despite being only a little over 90 minutes, A Fire There manages to convey a wealth of opinions, emotions, and more. The breadth of its focus is impressive, yet never feels too all-encompassing — the thread of the unknown future weaves all the concepts together, whether through the prayer of family members or shots of fortunes read from coffee mug remnants.

Film details: A Fire There (2026), directed by Marlene Edoyan. The film was screened on 14 July 2026 in Yerevan as part of the 23rd Golden Apricot International Film Festival.

https://oc-media.org/review-a-fire-there-an-atmospheric-study-of-ethnic-armenians-in-rural-georgia/