Year: 2026
Type: Documentary
Countries of production: Armenia, Luxembourg
Filming Country: Spain (Alicante)
Runtime: 7m 36s
Producer, Director: Seg Kirakossian
Synopsis:
Tradition is about a ritual in which enormous monuments are built over months only to be deliberately burned in a single night. The film confronts a paradox at the heart of human culture: our impulse to create beauty, assign importance to it, and then destroy it in the belief that the act serves a greater purpose.
As crowds celebrate, dance around the flames, and scream “Agua” to be drenched by firefighters, the happenings become a public ritual of sacrifice. The monuments, admired and cherished only moments before, are offered to the fire as part of a tradition that promises purification – not of the objects themselves, but of those who created, celebrated, and ultimately surrendered them.
Without narration or explanation, the film observes this act as a reflection of a wider human tendency. Throughout history, people have sacrificed lives, possessions, beliefs, and even entire civilizations in pursuit of purification, renewal, redemption or meaning. We believe that something valuable must be destroyed so that those who destroy it may emerge transformed. But is sacrifice a path to purification or a justification invented by those unwilling to bear the cost themselves?
The film ends with a single statement: “We create beauty and importance… to sacrifice them.”