Sermon to the Fish

A young man returns to an abandoned village surrounded by the vast plains and high mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh after several years in the army. Meanwhile, the village has become an empty stage set whose inhabitants have died of a mysterious disease, one that is slowly eating away at his sister, the sole survivor. Two siblings and an old dog are the only living beings in a dead landscape that is a metaphor for the impact of war on human life. A heavily atmospheric film made up of slow-moving, bleak scenes complemented by ambient, unsettling music as it attempts to answer the question of whether surviving is the same as living. (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival)