Stories of conflict, idealism, and the generation gap from the perspective of a young girl and an old man in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Black Garden is a truly emblematic phrase depicting the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh – a beautiful land with no potential for growth. It now exists as a void that remains unrecognizable in any light. It is not accepted as a part of Azerbaijan or Armenia. Nor is it viewed as independent of either. Internationally, it is merely regarded as ‘occupied territory’. After the war, the difference between the winners and the losers was clear. But after the displacement of millions, deported from the lands that they had lived in for generations to what was supposedly their homeland, was the outcome still so lucid? Was there really much difference between those who lost their houses and those who lost their sense of “home”? For the latter, they found themselves forced into a foreign territory, supposedly their own. For the former, they found their homeland altered beyond recognition. In both cases, their loss and instability signaled the coming fall of the Soviet Union – the beginning of freedom: reunion for some, but separation for others. This failed attempt at authoritarianism had changed their world forever. Now these people are all strangers leading occupied lives.