Resumo

In 1939, Adolf Hitler justified the atrocities of the Second World War by recalling one of the early 20th century’s greatest humanitarian crises: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”. Beneath this statement lies the ongoing denial and historical revisionism of the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923), a reality that persists today. This erasure urged Armenian director Inna Sahakyan to harness cinema’s power as a synthesis of all arts to revive the testimony of Aurora Mardiganian, a genocide survivor whose story embodies both witnessed horrors and untold traumas.
The essay “‘Films Are Slow Weapons’: The Resistance of Memory Through Art in Aurora’s Sunrise (2022)” analyzes Sahakyan’s documentary “Aurora’s Sunrise”, marked by an innovative blend of animation and live action. Besides combining archival footage, interviews, and segments from the partially lost film “Ravished Armenia” (1919), starring Mardiganian, the protagonist’s world is portrayed through storybook animation, a stylistic choice that contrasts with the collective trauma behind her experience.
Structured in two parts and framed by insights from an interview with Sahakyan, the essay first contextualizes the sociopolitical conditions that enabled the genocide and Mardiganian’s erasure, linking these to broader tendencies in European dictatorships. The second part explores the cinematic language of “Aurora’s Sunrise” as an act of resistance to memory erasure. It concludes by reflecting on how art, and especially animated cinema, can bring silenced testimonies to light and confront ongoing historical denial.