Film: ‘Sweeping Yerevan’ wins best documentary award at Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival

Panorama
Armenia – June 20 2022

CULTURE 11:46 20/06/2022 ARMENIA

“Sweeping Yerevan”, a film directed by Nairi Hakhverdi and produced with the financial support of the National Cinema Center of Armenia, won the Best Documentary award at the Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival held in the UK earlier in June.

“The National Cinema Center congratulates the film’s creative team and extends our best wishes for their continued success,” it said in a statement on Friday.

“Sweeping Yerevan” is a poetic observational portrait of Marina, a woman who travels 40 km every night to sweep the streets of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, dodging cars and putting her life at risk, in order to provide for her blind husband, live-in mother-in-law, unemployed son, and two young children. By day, she mends clothes for clients and works as a janitor at the local music school to cover the remainder of her family’s expenses. With few options for her generation since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marina nurtures education and musical skills in her children, hoping that they will have a different future from her own.