31/07/2024 - Inna Sahakyan’s heartfelt animated documentary is a testament to the human spirit set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide

This year’s Fest Anča notably screened Aurora’s Sunrise [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Inna Sahakyan
film profile], an acclaimed animated documentary by the Armenian director Inna Sahakyan. A co-production between Armenia, Lithuania, and Germany, Sahakyan’s third documentary feature is perhaps her most potent work to date as it tells a true story of an Armenian genocide survivor facing impossible odds.

The film switches between three narrative and stylistic layers: the animated story of a young Aurora during the onset of the genocide, and later as she set sail to New York to spread the news about the plight of Armenians; the archive footage from the interviews with an elderly Aurora lucidly and evocatively reflecting on the days of her spine-chilling youth; and the surviving black-and-white fragments from the silent Hollywood hit Auction of Souls (also known as Ravished Armenia) made in 1919, starring Aurora herself.

We first encounter the main character Arshaluys Mardiganian (voiced by Arpi Petrossian), later renamed Aurora, as a 14-year-old girl growing up in a well-to-do Armenian household with seven other children in the village of Chmshgadzak in Eastern Anatolia, at the beginning of the First World War. It is a bucolic setting, consisting of a big mansion surrounded by lush trees and gentle slopes. The days are spent playing in the garden, singing, performing and enjoying long dinners. For Sahakyan, animation becomes an effective tool of re-enacting past events, both happy and tragic ones. The blissful life is made even more paradise-like by the use of soft naturalistic watercolours, which highlight recurrent motifs that have come to symbolise the lineage of Armenian genocide films, from Henrik Malyan’s Nahapet (1977) to Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002): blossoming trees replete with ripe apples, pomegranates and apricots, and their subsequent destruction later seen in desolate gardens and demolished houses.

Animation also alleviates the story’s most dreadful moments. The Mardiganians’ peaceful life is interrupted by the orders of Talaat Pasha, who went down in history as the architect of the Armenian genocide. An obstacle in building the ethnonationalist Turkish state, thousands of Armenian families were ordered to be displaced, killed or sent to death marches to the Syrian desert. Sahakyan uses animation as a well-trodden trope—exemplified by the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale and animated documentaries Persepolis and Flee – to make the atrocities of Aurora’s harrowing journey more bearable to watch. On top of that, the animation storytelling adds an almost mythological aura to the narrative: the young girl loses all her family, escapes the death march, then becomes a sex slave, and in the end, makes it to the land of freedom – the USA.

Aurora’s odyssey is interspersed with archive footage of the elderly Mardiganian, appearing at just the right moment, as if to remind us that her story is, in fact, real. Just when it seems that the events that the animated Aurora narrates – and the film shows through the black-and-white sequences of Auction of Souls – are too dreadful to be true, the real old Aurora recalls, in her croaky voice, that the reality was even more atrocious. The Hollywood film shows beautiful Armenian girls nailed to crosses like Jesus, but Mardiganian effectively points out that the reality was much less cinematic. Fighting back tears and doubts, young Aurora goes through a labyrinth of American press, Hollywood producers and charity funds, only to realise that charity is a system too, and there are people that benefit from it.

Ultimately, the film's strength lies in its well-structured narrative, which oscillates between mythologising one’s past and lending an empathetic ear to a story that is a true testament to the human spirit. By combining its three layers in an efficient manner, Sahakyan, just like Aurora herself, reminds us of Armenia’s wounds that Turkey still refuses to acknowledge. As the current genocide in Gaza dominates the news and online feeds, watching Aurora’s Sunrise now feels like a gesture of solidarity and hope.

Aurora's Dream is a co-production between Armenia’s Bars Media, Lithuania’s ARTBOX laisvalaikio klubas and Germany’s Gebrüder Beetz Filmproduktion. World sales are managed by CAT&Docs.