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Shoghakat Vardanyan‘s “1489,” which follows the director’s family after her brother goes missing while serving in the Armenian army, won documentary festival IDFA‘s best film prize Thursday, Variety reported.

The jury of the International Competition section said it was film that “acts as a piercing light that makes visible the vast hidden interior landscape of grief and creates a tangible presence from unbearable absence.”

The jury added that it was “cinema as a tool of survival — to allow us all, to look at the things we would rather not see, and ultimately, an unforgettable example of cinema as an act of love.”

The film revolves around the disappearance of the filmmaker’s 21-year-old brother, Soghomon Vardanyan, who went missing in the early days of the Artsakh war in 2020.