In his latest documentary Daniel Kötter sketches the psychogeography of a geopolitically charged landscape and its inhabitants between extractivism, war and displacement. In the form of a journey in eastern Armenia, the film follows human and non-human actors as they make their way through the landscape, from Lake Sevan to the Sotk gold mine, occupied by Azerbaijan since the Karabakh War in 2020.
During the Berlinale, the German Film Critics' Association recently awarded LANDSHAFT the 2023 German Film Critics' Award in the Best Documentary category. The jury statement: "How a war withdraws into the landscape and is depicted there as a silent geopolitical formation, while people continue to go about their lives - our winning film tells of this in impressive, but always respectfully distanced images. Nothing is embedded here, there are no major events and at most an uproar among the sheep. In a deceptive way, everything seems to be subordinated to the cycle of nature, while the conflict can break out again at any time - as happened most recently in the late summer of 2023. For his equally subtle and cautious approach to the people and animals living in the Armenian-Azerbaijani border region enclosed by mountains, the award for Best Documentary Film goes to Daniel Kötter for his film LANDSHAFT."
In September 2023, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region escalated when Azerbaijan militarily seized the self-proclaimed republic and hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to flee.
