130 minutes – Documentary
Language: English, French, Romanian, Italian, Arabic and Spanish with English subtitles.
Festival release date: March 2023 – International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA)
Release date: June 9, 2023
Production company: National Film Board of Canada
Canadian distributor: National Film Board of Canada

In the era of the digital revolution, the transmission of knowledge is going through a profound upheaval as humanity’s archives migrate from paper to the cloud. How can we grasp the impact of the ongoing abandonment of books on thought and learning? What is the future of our individual and collective memories? Filmmaker Oana Suteu Khintirian is a member of a double diaspora, both Armenian and Romanian. In a personal quest with universal resonance, she embarks on a journey to understand how to preserve her cultural history and share it with her son at this critical moment in the history of the written word. This poetic and inspiring film essay introduces us to various “guides” from around the world—in locations including Milan, San Francisco, Bucharest, Copenhagen and Montreal—while freely navigating the continuum between the physical and virtual worlds. From the hot colours of the Sahara to the shelves of a legendary bookstore in Buenos Aires, and from the delicate grain of centuries-old manuscripts to the blinking servers of new digital libraries, Beyond Paper blends reflection and emotion, reminding us that human knowledge is above all an affair of the soul and the spirit.

Click here to watch the NFB trailer.