EXCLUSIVE: Jordan has withdrawn Sareen Hairabedian ’s documentary My Sweet Land as its official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards, reportedly after coming under pressure from Azerbaijan, Deadline has learned. The award-winning documentary follows 11-year-old Vrej, who dreams of becoming a dentist in his village in Artsakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of a violent dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the 1980s. Artsakh fought for decades to become a breakaway state, an independence movement that ended with the Azerbaijani offense of 2023.
The choice of the film by Jordan sparked controversy in Azerbaijan where its sympathetic account of the Armenians displaced by the conflict was viewed as taking an overtly anti-Azerbaijani stance. Deadline understands the Azerbaijan government wrote to Jordan’s Foreign Ministry requesting it reconsider the film’s selection as its Oscar entry, which in turn put pressure on Jordan’s Royal Film Commission to withdraw the film. Sources at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences confirm Jordan withdrew My Sweet Land for consideration as Best International Feature Film.
This leaves Jordan without an entry in that category for the 97 th Academy Awards. Director Sareen Hairabedian and producer Azza Hourani tell Deadline exclusively, “This is very devastating news for our team that an emotional intimate story of a child’s love for his home .
