Aurora’s sunrise OmeU

The incredible true story of Aurora Mardiganian comes vividly alive in Inna Sahakyan’s poignant retelling of a teenage genocide survivor who briefly rose to fame as the star of Auction of Souls – a silent Hollywood dramatization of her own life. Masterfully combining archival footage and animation, this harrowing but also stirring docudrama is a revelatory testimony of the unimaginable human toll of the 1915 genocide and its pernicious role in the formation of the Armenian diaspora.

Aurora’s Sunrise combines animation and rediscovered footage of the silent film „Auction of Souls“ to tell the story of Arshaluys Mardiganian, teenage survivor of the Armenian genocide of 1915-17. After being marched out of her hometown, Arshaluys is forced to walk miles through the Syrian desert. She suffers the horrors of the death-march, escapes and is recaptured, but eventually reaches the US. There, she finds herself renamed, propelled to stardom, at the mercy of Hollywood greed and overwhelmed by being made the representative of the Armenian people. Between animated scenes, interviews of Arshaluys herself bring into focus the story’s painful reality. Today, the Armenian genocide is recognised in only 34 countries. It is seldom talked about, despite the deaths of over one million people. Germany was knowingly complacent and the logic of the Armenian genocide later informed the tactics of the Holocaust. In spite of this, Germany only recognised the Armenian genocide in 2015.

96 min, 2022, Armenia/Germany/Lithuania