“Review by Alex Deleon
“Aurora’s Sunrise”: a Genocide documentary with animation, was the sensation and the discovery of the 2022 Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan. More than a genocide tale, it is one of the long suppression and eventual resurrection of the life and testimony of an indomitable genocide survivor, Aurora Mardiganian (a.k.a Arshaluys Mardigian) , who lived to retell her tale at age 83, when an Armenian American scholar from Zoryan Institute tracked her down after her tale was supressed and neglected for over half a century.
With her immediate family all murdered by the Turks, then pressed into slavery by the Kurds, Aurora was finally liberated and shipped to the States via Norway in the end of 1917.
At a time when “The Armenian question” was still hot news her dreadful story was picked up by Hollywood and exploited as a film in which she herself appeared. For this purpose she agreed to have her name changed from the original Armenian Arshaluys to the direct English equivalent, “Aurora”. However, the strain of reliving her horrible experiences soon became too much for the 18 year old and she ended up in a convent, her role in the money making film taken over by an actress. Once the subject was no longer profitable the film, as well as Aurora’s entire story was dropped like a hot potato and allowed to lapse into obscurity.
Perhaps a better name for the current film would be “Aurora’s Resurrection”.
In live footage scenes from that interview Aurora, now 83, states that the true horrors of Turkish brutality have never been shown before — we then see a shot of women empaled on stakes and left to die in an open field — the stakes still protruding from swollen bellies.
Even for Hollywood’s silent film, the scene was so horiffic, that they changed it to crucifixion of women,
What really sets this film apart is the ingenious use of hyper-realistic animation — based on direct tracing over old photographs — giving these images a new life as if they had been taken just now, not a hundred years ago — giving the entire film a striking impact of immediate actuality.
Inestimable credit for this must be extended to art director Tigran Arakelyan, who coordinated the work of -many artists and animators, both from Armenia and Lithuania (the film is co-production between Armenia, Germany and Lithuania) to achieve the dazzling final effect. Aurora’s Sunrise, regardless of any prizes it may win along the way, will surely go down as a new landmark in Armenian cinema.
By orchestrating and directing this masterpiece of documentary art, Inna Sahakyan has carved out a permanent place for herself in the history of Armenian cinema.
Aurora’s Sunrise is still working on its North American festival premiere.If It attracts the wider attention there that it so richly deserved it may well go down as an international landmark of innovative documentary cinema in general as well.
Inna Sahakyan, director of “Aurora’s Sunrise”
