Genocide can never be hidden regardless how much Turkey tries….

As I am Jewish through my maternal line, one of the most shocking lines in the film is…”do you know how Hitler convinced his generals to commit genocide? He told them….who remembers the Armenian genocide of 1915?”…He had a point. Turkey still denies any wrong doing but facts are facts and there were witnesses to the genocide (refer to Clarence Ussher’s book “An American Physician in Turkey”) and it matters, because it’s always raised when Turkey wants to join the EU….it’s terrible human rights record started in 1915….Atom Egoyan tries to tell the story of the genocide through Raffi (David Alplay) who is part of a film crew making a movie about this atrocity. Interwoven is the complicated relationship between Raffi’s girlfriend (who is in fact his step sister) and his mother Ari (Arsinee Khanjian) and another subplot between Raffi and a customs agent (Christopher Plummer) who thinks Raffi is a drug trafficker (or does he?) and stops him on a fight back from Turkey. You won’t learn much historical fact here about the genocide, but you will understand how it affected the Armenian’s who survived and their descendants (via another storyline involving a painter from the town of Van-Arshile Gorky). Incidentally, I’ve always wanted to go to Van and visit Lake Van as I adore the famous Van cats….The film’s title, Ararat, refers to a mountain in the region although it’s not visible from the town of Van itself. The film gets its authenticity from using Canadian-Armenian actors who actually speak Armenian. Cher would approve....she's Armenian!