‘’Taniel’’ is a multi-award winning arthouse short film by British writer and director Garo Berberian, telling the story of the last months of poet Taniel Varoujan until his murder during the Armenian genocide at the age of 31, the day of his son’s birth. The film is the first to deal with the story of a man considered to be one of Armenia’s greatest poets with international fame. The film is loosely based on the memoirs of Aram Andonian, a journalist arrested on the same day as Varoujan, on 24 April 1915, when some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and deported in the first major event of the Armenian genocide.
Film Noir in style, “Taniel” pays homage to the era of dramatic filmmaking with extreme lighting and camera angles. The narrative is mostly heard through poetry, with Varoujan poems in Armenian expressing the emotions in each of the scenes; and narrative poetry in English delivered with an emotive depth of feeling by Sean Bean.
Shoghakat MLKE-Galstyan, the co-founder and soloist of MIHR Theatre, embodies Araksi Varoujan, the wife of Taniel Varoujan, in the film.
Director: Garo Berberian
Poetry by Taniel Varoujan
Narrator: Sean Bean
Araksi Varoujan: Shoghakat MLKE-Galstyan
Turk Killer: Tsolak MLKE-Galstyan
Kurd Killer: Petros Ghazanchyan
