Re-coding Our Emotional Memory

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“I feel so down, I can’t focus on work.” 

After receiving the fifth relatively similar message, I started thinking that something’s up in the air. A new virus, maybe? Another Venus retrograde or just a change in seasons…But once I checked the calendar, it all became pretty clear. 

It’s September. And September 2020 is anchored in our collective memory to a disaster. 

The Azerbaijani attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, waking us all up and reigniting the “frozen conflict” started on September 27, 2020. The killing of Armenian soldier Gegham Sahakyan in Yeraskh was on September 1, 2021. The series of clashes along the Armenia–Azerbaijan border in Jermuk were on September 13, 2022.

And…on September 19 last year we lost Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh).

I understand that some of us may be mentally elsewhere now, moving on with our lives and agendas—and that’s okay, it’s a natural human reaction. Yet, even as we carry on, our bodies may still store unreleased emotions and trauma. As Bessel van der Kolk, the renowned Dutch psychiatrist, highlights in his work, the body indeed “keeps the score.” In his best-selling book “The Body Keeps the Score”, van der Kolk revisits a quote from Sigmund Freud in 1895, which to me perfectly describes the collective experience of Armenian society: “I think this man is suffering from memories.” 

On top of many old memories we suffer from and constantly react to, we now have new ones—memories we didn’t even have time to embrace. Some of those memories result in this weird and new “September syndrome”—a collective sense of apathy, repressed guilt, and muted stress.

However, several things happened this September that may signal a change in the future.

On September 13, a new Armenian film premiered called The Other Side of the Medal, a biopic of weightlifter Nazik Avdalyan. Avdalyan is the first Armenian woman to win a gold medal at the World Weightlifting Championships and the first to achieve a world championship in any sport.

Projects like this, created for a mass audience, are very rare in Armenian cinema. Biopics, especially, are not common, and when they do appear, they’re almost always about men, military figures, or, of course, Komitas, haunted by the trauma of 1915—as if he hadn’t lived a life before that tragedy.

This film felt like a breath of fresh air, arriving when our society needed it most: September. Even more impressive, the director, Anna Maxim, who also wrote the script and played the lead role, spent two years training rigorously to lift heavy weights herself. Such dedication to physical transformation for a role is a rarity in Armenian cinema.

The premiere was amazing, the red carpet with local celebrities, Nazik Avdalyan herself with her son and a large audience breathlessly following the film. 

During the screening, I was caught between two groups of people. A group in front with slight Russian accents criticized the film for lack of storytelling, usage of cliches, and dull dialogues. The people sitting behind me were simply driven by the plot. They were crying, laughing, screaming, cheering for the protagonist and genuinely weeping when she was in a car crash.

The film focuses on Nazik Avdalyan’s remarkable journey to winning gold at the 2016 European Weightlifting Championships and the sacrifices along the way. 

The plot dives into her personal life, particularly issues with her partner—a former athlete who harbors quiet jealousy over her success and fame. And of course, he soon also starts cheating on her. As his infidelity further complicates their relationship, the narrative weaves together the tension between her championship career and her domestic life, where her husband wants to keep her home.

In the film’s more serious turn, Nazik faces a devastating car accident that leaves her with severe injuries and the potential loss of her ability to walk. Yet, her only concern remains whether she can still compete in the Olympics.

While the group of critics in front of me kept talking about how the current plastic surgery trend prevents actresses from actually showing emotions and relatable expressions, the other group behind me started weeping. Who cares if the plot has gaps or the Gyumri accent used in the film was sounding fake if people were believing it?

The film’s most pivotal moment comes during Nazik Avdalyan’s attendance at the European Weightlifting Championships in Førde, Norway. Despite not being fully recovered from spinal surgeries, Nazik faces personal turmoil—alarming calls from her husband in Artsakh and news of attacks on the region. Even amidst these distractions, she secures a gold medal, triumphing over her Russian rival (with whom she had an antagonistic text exchange), a Turkish competitor, and a British one—fulfilling what might be considered the ultimate Armenian dream. After a seven-year hiatus from sports and overcoming serious injuries, she makes an extraordinary comeback and wins the gold.

Symbolically Nazik dedicates her victory to Armenian soldiers in Artsakh. 

Watching it today, in the same month, when we lost all that territory felt incredibly sad, but also cleansing.

The audience’s collective weeping brought a new realization to me: they were seeing their new hero—a female one, no less. A woman who can handle it all: the kitchen, motherhood, the betrayal of a cheating husband, and lifting enormous weights with a spine that had barely recovered from surgery. They saw someone from their own region, living their struggles, speaking their language, but also possessing an unwavering determination that propelled her beyond her circumstances.

Who cares if a few film buffs raised on Bertolucci don’t like it? This film isn’t for them. It’s for other Armenians—perhaps the less fortunate, the kids in semi-abandoned regions, studying in community schools, surrounded by limited opportunities and even fewer hopes for a better future. Now, with Nazik, they have a hero who says sport can offer a path forward, a sense of victory. In a country struggling to grasp the meaning of victory (let’s not forget the strange concept of “moral victory”), that means something. 

Whether real, imagined, or inspired by real events, we need victories. We need to see people win, to relate to them, and to start remembering what it feels like. For too long, our entire culture and cinema during independence have been focused on teaching us how to grieve and lose. And while we’ve become good at both, maybe it’s time to learn something else.

Arts & Culture