The Son of the Olive Merchant

French filmmaker Mathieu Zeitindjioglou is the latest member of a too-fast-growing branch of directors who apparently can't tell the difference between a serious nonfiction production and a home movie. In this case, Zeitindjioglou has some credible reason for cinematic self-insertion, since The Son of the Olive Merchant focuses on contemporary Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, and the director is the descendant of a survivor of the grisly events of 1915. However, Zeitindjioglou explores the subject in the strangest possible way, traveling to Turkey with his Polish-born wife Anna, whom he allows to play tour guide and reporter while he stays behind the camera. Anna's interviewing skills leave a lot to be desired (she spends a lot of time pressing for information from Turks who barely speak English), and she is clearly much more comfortable in the role of a tourist enjoying Istanbul's nightlife and historic sites. Awkwardly inserted throughout the film are strange animated sequences based on a tale of how Zeitindjioglou's ancestor escaped the genocide while wearing a shabby wolf fur. Occasionally, however, Zeitindjioglou is able to get in a few points on the crassness of the Turkish government's continued refusal to acknowledge the events of the past, and the film features a snippet from a Turkish propaganda piece claiming that the Armenian people were merely relocated without any great loss of life. But, for too much of the running time, this painfully serious subject is trivialized through self-indulgent filmmaking. Optional. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)