Between Borders

🎬 How Accurate Is Between Borders (2025)?

The true story of the Petrosyan family and the anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan

✅ Based on True Events

Between Borders, directed by Mark Freiburger, is based on the real-life story of Ivan, Violetta, and their daughters Julia and Olga Petrosyan, an Armenian family who fled Baku during the anti-Armenian pogroms of the late 1980s. The film was developed in close collaboration with the family, who contributed directly to the script across two years of interviews and meetings.

📚 Real History: An Armenian Family’s Journey

During the pogroms in Sumgait (1988) and Baku (1990), thousands of Armenians were attacked, killed, or displaced because of their ethnicity. The Petrosyan family escaped thanks to a combination of survival planning—emergency flares, ropes, and an axe—and the help of Azerbaijani neighbors who protected them.

After fleeing Baku, the family moved between Russia, Armenia, and Ukraine, encountering discrimination in each new place. Eventually, they resettled in the United States with support from missionary families they met through the Church of the Nazarene.

🕰️ Historical and Political Context

The film is set in the final years of the Soviet Union, a time when the collapse of centralized power allowed long-suppressed ethnic tensions to rise. Although Armenia and Azerbaijan were both Soviet republics, increasing nationalism, state propaganda, and hate speech against Armenians fueled widespread violence. Government authorities were often passive or complicit.

The story also references earlier historical trauma, such as the 1920 massacre in Shushi, from which Violetta’s family had previously fled. Decades later, they would lose their home again under similar circumstances.

🎥 How Faithful Is the Film?

The film is highly accurate. It presents documented experiences of the Petrosyan family without dramatic embellishments. Events such as street mobs shouting “Death to Armenians,” lists used to identify Armenian families, and systemic discrimination in education and employment are all drawn from real testimony.

💬 Why Watch It?

Because it documents a lesser-known episode of forced displacement and ethnic persecution. Between Borders contributes to public understanding of the Armenian experience in Soviet and post-Soviet spaces. It is a film that can serve as educational material in schools and universities.