1489 (film)

1489 is an Armenian war documentary film directed by Shoghakat Vardanyan. The film focuses on the director's personal experience as she and her family cope with the disappearance of her brother, Soghomon Vardanyan, during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The title "1489" refers to the number assigned to Soghomon's unidentified remains, symbolizing the many soldiers who perished in the conflict and whose bodies remained nameless.

The film chronicles Shoghakat Vardanyan's journey over a period of more than three years, as she documents the search for her brother, who was serving in the Armenian army when the war broke out between the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, and Azerbaijan in September 2020. Soghomon, a 21-year-old music student, went missing on the seventh day of the conflict. Using her smartphone, Shoghakat captures intimate footage of her family's emotional turmoil during their search for answers.

Six months after his disappearance, human remains were found, but it took over a year and a half for the family to receive the results of a DNA test confirming whether the remains were indeed Soghomon's.

• Armenian cinema