Adieu Bakou

Since 1986, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a dead?end conflict about the control over Nagorno Karabach, a small Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Until 1989 Baku, the Azeri capital, had been spared. But in January 1990 this cosmopolitan city where Azeri, Muslims, Russians, Jews and Armenians had been living side by side peacefully, became the stage for bloody pogroms. Especially the Armenian part of the population fell victim to these actions. When the Russian army intervened to end the pogroms, the war escalated into a succession of acts of violence. In adieu bakou residents tell the story of how they try to survive in a city where nationalism has destroyed a civilisation in which a variety of cultures and religions used to coexist.