Directed by Inna Sahakyan • 2022 • Armenia

Inna Sahakyan’s exquisite and heartbreaking animation retraces the scarcely believable biography of Aurora Mardiganian: a survivor of the Armenian Genocide who became a silent movie star. After surviving the infamous “death marches”, Mardiganian fled from a Turkish harem to revolutionary Petersburg and then to New York. She was alter cast as herself in Auction of Souls, a 1919 silent epic about the genocide aimed at rallying American support for the Armenian cause. Interweaving interviews with the elderly Mardiganian, delicate paper-cut animation, and surviving fragments from the 1919 film, Sahakyan honours the memory of both Mardiganian and the rift in national history that the genocide produced.

AURORA’S SUNRISE • Արշալույսի լուսաբացը
Directed by Inna Sahakyan
Written by Inna Sahakyan, Peter Liakhov, Kerstin Meyer-Beetz
Cinematography by Vardan Brutyan
Music by Christine Aufderhaar
Starring: Anzhelika Hakobyan, Arpi Petrossian

In Armenian, English, and Turkish with English subtitles