The Other Side of Home

Shortlisted for an Oscar nomination, this 2016 documentary is a personal work for California-based filmmaker Nare Mkrtchyan, who embraced her ethnic roots and attended the 100th commemoration in Armenia of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. A controversial subject on the world stage, as well as for American foreign policy and certainly for Turkey (the World War I-era Ottoman government waged a campaign to exterminate 1.5 million Armenians, but Turkey rejects the "genocide" label), this historic tragedy is only blurrily known to many contemporary Turks and Armenians. Seeking a focus for her film, Mkrtchyan finds 42-year-old Maya, who lives in Turkey but has recently learned that her great-grandmother was Armenian. As a child, the latter barely survived the massacre of her family. Escaping to Turkey, Maya’s great-grandmother was forced to reinvent herself with a fake name, becoming immersed in a new culture and religion. In light of these revelations, Maya decides to attend the commemoration, and agrees to let Mkrtchyan film her and ask questions. What emerges is a portrait of Maya—part Turk, part Armenian—struggling to reconcile those adversarial parts of herself, going so far as to rationalize, with obvious internal conflict, why the murders and mass starvation of Armenians was not technically genocide. Maya’s strained psychology is both fascinating and tragic. Mkrtchyan spends a bit too much time with well-intended, mournful but also redundant images of people marching at the centennial anniversary of the genocide. But overall this is a powerful reminder of a horrific 20th-century tragedy that is still not universally acknowledged. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)