Motherland

Growing up in Los Angeles, I felt different, an outsider, due to my Armenian ethnicity, national origin, and sexual orientation. These factors made it challenging to have a clear identity, as I was keenly aware of being a minority on many levels, marginalized, and felt at a disadvantage from my community and from my peers.

When I turned three years old, my parents took me to visit Armenia, and remarkably those early memories and images remained embedded in my heart from our three-month trip. It was a life-altering experience that instilled a love for my motherland. When you feel you don’t belong, you hold on to your roots tightly.

I spent years learning about the 1915 Armenian Genocide, when 1.5 million Armenian were exterminated from their historic homeland by the Ottoman Turks. This ancient land, Armenia, is historically where Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat, was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a State religion, and the beautiful Armenian highlands were famously memorialized by William Saroyan in his iconic novels.

In 2018, I revisited Armenia as an adult and fell in love with the raw and natural beauty of the land. Most especially, I was awe-struck by the hospitable people unjaded by years of hardship, first under Soviet rule followed by their post-Soviet realities. A deep feeling of ancestry and peace washed over me.

It was a shock when on September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan and Turkey unleashed a genocidal assault and ethnic cleansing on the Armenians of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and massacred 5,000+ people in 44 days. It triggered and awakened deep wounds in Armenian communities worldwide and ignited new trauma. I watched the horrors of Armenians being slaughtered, beheaded, and violated in unimaginable ways while witnessing the international community’s deafening silence. truth was not being reported.

It became clear that this 21st-century slaughter taking place needed to be properly documented and accurately reported. Without hesitation, I packed up and flew to my embattled motherland to personally interview officials, veterans, experts, and journalists. I documented precisely how Azerbaijan’s president, Aliyev, and Turkish President Erdoğan – a pair of dictators and self-professed “brothers” – are pulling the wool over the world’s eyes, and in the process, getting away with mass murder.

I was determined to make a documentary film aimed toward a worldwide audience so that international viewers would see and experience the extraordinary beauty of Armenia and Artsakh, understand the context of the unprovoked attack, and be eyewitnesses to the humanitarian catastrophe. ‘Motherland’ is raw, unfiltered, and without compromise.

‘Motherland’ is dedicated to the bright memory of the 5,000+ Armenian martyrs in 2020.