‘Anduni’ is an Armenian word meaning the melancholy of enforced exile. This is the dominant feeling pervading Samira Radsi’s poetic and sensitive film. Although other emotions and moods are present, wistful longing is the keynote.

The central character, Belinda, is a young Armenian woman, living in Germany, whose father has just died. She is left with the job of sorting out her parents’ affairs so that her mother can claim a pension, and this task causes her to reflect upon her origins, and to explore the possible reasons for the unhappiness of her parents – of the under-achieving, alcoholic father and the listless, frustrated mother. Belinda comes to understand, largely through conversations with her likeable uncle Levon, that cultural displacement may have been the reason, and that traumatic experiences in Turkey (where Armenians were repressed) also cast a long shadow.

A welcome source of humour lightening this despondency comes from the extended family, shown in a series of scenes chronicling the clan-like get-togethers, where food and gossip play a large part. The scheming aunts trying to set Belinda up with suitable Armenian men are highly comical, if slightly stereotypical. Meanwhile, Belinda’s relationship with German boyfriend Manuel, with whom she has just moved in, is reaching a critical point. Life with Manuel represents independence from family, and a more, modern, individualistic future. However, the relationship is not depicted in sufficient depth and thus the ending, where the couple are imagined overcoming their difficulties as they embrace in an idealised Armenian landscape, feels ultimately unconvincing.