Endless Corridor wins award in Milan

/By AzerNews/

By Amina Nazarli

“Endless Corridor,” a film by Lithuanian director Aleksandras Brokas and dedicated to the Khojaly Massacre, won the best Documentary Editing award at the Milano International Filmmakers Festival (IFF) last week.

The Milan IFF 2015 nominated the film for the "Best Short Film," "Best Cinematography in a Documentary," and "Best Documentary Editing" categories.

Sharing his joy, Brokas said the award was a great honor.

“This time, the attention of the jury was focused on the exceptional creative and technical qualities of the 'Endless Corridor.' I express my gratitude to the creative team working with me and the people of Khojaly, who shared with us their tragic stories. So much international attention for the 'Endless Corridor' shows that the stories in the film does not leave anyone indifferent. The painful lessons of history must finally be learned, so that the Khojaly tragedy is never repeated,” he stated.

The premiere of the documentary was held on July 1 last year at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Grammy Award winner Gerald Rafshoon of the United States and Brokas are the documentary's producers.

Endless Corridor has been submitted to more than 60 film festivals throughout the world. Most have already included it in their official programmes.

The next event is the Cape Town Film Festival in South Africa. Two more awards came from the Tenerife International Film Festival in July, where the film was declared the "Best Documentary" and Aleksandras Brokas was the "Best Director of a Documentary."

Endless Corridor follows two journalists, Lithuanian Richard Lapaitis and Russian Victoria Ivleva, on their return to Azerbaijan 20 years after covering the horrific Khojaly Massacre during the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. They journey aims to find the survivors they had first met in the aftermath of the Armenian attack. The accounts of both victims and perpetrators tell a dramatic story of the inhumane events that occurred in Azerbaijan's Khojaly on February 26, 1992.

The film is narrated by Jeremy Irons, the Oscar-winning British actor, while the Emmy-winning American producer Gerald Rafshoon was the executive producer.

By February, the film had been presented in Istanbul, Ankara, Rome, Vilnius, London, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, Bern, and Luxembourg as part of the Justice for Khojaly campaign, organized by Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva.