She is known as ‘Armenia’s Anne Frank’. Except, unlike the young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, what happened to Aurora Mardiganian was largely forgotten, until now.
‘Aurora’s Sunrise’ is Armenia’s official submission to the 2023 Academy Awards for best international feature film. The animated documentary tells the true story of a 14-year-old Armenian girl who escaped the 1915 Armenian genocide but was sold into sexual slavery. Through a combination of luck, wit and perseverance, Mardiganian managed to flee to the US, where she found fame in Hollywood alongside Charlie Chaplin and other silent-era stars.
“I always compare [Aurora’s story] with Anne Frank’s,” Inna Sahakyan, the Armenian director of the film, told openDemocracy. “[Frank] became a representation of how to keep humanity and artistic skills even during such horrific surroundings as the Holocaust.”
