Trigger Warning: Personal recollections of sexual assault
“Grandma’s Tattoos”
A family story that reveals the fate of the Armenian women driven out of Ottoman Turkey during the First World War.
Filmmaker: Suzanne Khardalian
During the First World War, millions of Armenians were forced out of their homes in the then Ottoman empire, into the deserts of Syria and Iraq.
More than a million people died in what Armenians describe as a genocide, although Turkey rejects this accusation.
Filmmaker Suzanne Khardalian makes a journey into her own family to investigate the terrible truth behind her late grandma’s odd tattoos. Her grandma was always a bit strange, never liking physical contact and covered with unusual marks.
Everybody in the family seemed to know the story, but no-one ever spoke about it.
So when grandma’s mystery is slowly unveiled, family taboos are broken down and Suzanne exposes the bigger story - the fate of the Armenian women driven out of Ottoman Turkey during the First World War.
The painful journey behind Suzanne’s grandma’s tattoos unfolds through Armenia, Lebanon, Sweden and Syria, finally bringing out the truth.
It is a grotesque thing, to be marked for life, to be forced to bear the signs of your oppressors, that every glance in the mirror opens again the wounds that one tries to conceal. This was painful to watch.
