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Noura Kevorkian is a documentary filmmaker (writer, director, editor, and cinematographer). She has won numerous awards including a 2023 Peabody Award [1] for her 2022 film Batata , which is submitted for consideration to the 2024 Oscars in the Documentary Feature Category.
Noura Kevorkian is a Lebanese Canadian Armenian filmmaker. Her Lebanese father, Barkev Kevorkian, was a machinist. Her Syrian mother, Dzaghig Kevorkian, is a homemaker. Kevorkian was born in Aleppo, Syria and raised in Lebanon until her emigration to Canada in her late teens. Kevorkian's upbringing has resulted in her being multi-lingual (Armenian, Arabic, English) and multi-cultural.
Kevorkian's father, Barkev, was the son of refugees, born in the Karantina refugee camp outside Beirut, Lebanon. [2] The son of Armenian genocide survivors who had been displaced from their ancestral home in Marash, Turkey, during the Armenian genocide (1915-1923), Barkev was forced to work at the age of nine. He self-learned to read English and soon mastered engineering and science books. He became a successful machine maker and supplied machine parts to various factories in Beirut, especially during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).
Kevorkian's family history and upbringing greatly influenced her work, resulting in a documentary about the Armenian genocide and the Lebanese Civil War entitled Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes [3] as well as a hybrid documentary-drama film about her father's late-age Parkinson's-like disease entitled 23 Kilometres. [4]
Kevorkian's family moved from Aleppo to Beirut when she was one year old. A few years later her family moved permanently to the small Armenian village of Anjar (Aanjar) in the fertile Bekaa Valley (Beqqa) region of eastern Lebanon. Here, Kevorkian grew up with her parents and four sisters. The five Kevorkian girls attended the Armenian Evangelical Secondary School in Anjar, established by German missionaries - Hillsbund - after the resettlement of the Musa Dagh Armenians in 1939. Kevorkian's film Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes depicts this idyllic time of her youth.
Kevorkian's films focus on women, social issues and human rights. [5] She is the granddaughter of survivors of the Armenian genocide. This inter-generational trauma has been well-established by medical/sociological research, and has informed her sense of identity, cultural pride, humanitarianism, and documentary storytelling / filmmaking.
Kevorkian's childhood was infused with the stories of her family, her relatives, and the countless elders of Anjar. She has personal experience of war violence and trauma, having lived through the Lebanese Civil War. Kevorkian went into self-exile to leave this violence and sought, in her late-teens, a new life as an immigrant to Canada. She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) in economics and finance, with minor studies in Middle East history and cinema studies from the University of Toronto. Kevorkian continued her filmmaking journey with training at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the Summer Institute of Film and Television (SIFT), [6] the Canadian Film Centre, Directors Guild of Canada, and other industry courses, programs and education.
Kevorkian produces many of her films under her company Saaren Films. [7]
Kevorkian won a 2022 Peabody Award for her film Batata, [25] and received three Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023, for Best Feature Length Documentary, Best Cinematography in a Documentary and Best Editing in a Documentary (with Mike Munn). [26]
She previously directed the documentary films Veils Uncovered (2002), Anjar: The Heroes of Musa Dagh (2007), Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes (2009) and 23 Kilometres (2015). [27]
Anjar ; Arabic: عنجر / ALA-LC: ‘Anjar; also known as Hawsh Mousa, is a town of Lebanon, near the Syrian border, located in the Bekaa Valley. The population is 2,400, consisting almost entirely of Armenians. The total area is about twenty square kilometers. Since 1984, the ruins of the Umayyad settlement of Anjar are recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Carthage Film Festival is an annual film festival that takes place in Tunis and was founded in 1966. It is also called by its abbreviation JCC, from its French name, Journées cinématographiques de Carthage, or by its Arabic title, أيام قرطاج السينمائية. Initially biennial alternating with the Carthage Theatre Festival, the festival became an annual event in 2014. A directing committee chaired by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, joined with professionals of the cinema industry, is in charge of the organization.
ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.
The cinema of Lebanon, according to film critic and historian Roy Armes, is the only other cinema in the Arabic-speaking region, beside Egypt's, that could amount to a national cinema. Cinema in Lebanon has been in existence since the 1920s, and the country has produced more than 500 films.
Berlin Beirut is a 2004 German-Lebanese short film by the Lebanese director Myrna Maakaron.
Teta, Alf Marra is an Arabic language documentary film about a feisty Beiruti grandmother.
The Munich International Film Festival is the largest summer film festival in Germany and second only in size and importance to the Berlinale. It has been held annually since 1983 and takes place in late June or early July. The latest festival was held from June 23 to July 2, 2022. It presents feature films and feature-length documentaries. The festival is also proud of the role it plays in discovering talented and innovative young filmmakers. With the exception of retrospectives, tributes and homages, all of the films screened are German premieres and many are European and world premieres. There are a dozen competitions with prizes worth over €250,000 which are donated by the festival's major sponsors and partners.
Homeland: Iraq Year Zero is a 2015 documentary film written and directed by the Iraqi-French film director Abbas Fahdel.
Orphans of the Genocide, is a 2013 television film written and directed by American-Armenian filmmaker Bared Maronian. Filmed was premiered in 2015 at the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The heroes of the film who tell their stories are the descendants of the genocide survivors.
Starless Dreams is a 2016 Iranian documentary directed by Mehrdad Oskouei.
The Lindalee Tracey Award is an annual film award, presented in memory of Canadian documentary filmmaker Lindalee Tracey to emerging filmmakers whose works reflect values of social justice and a strong personal point of view. Created by Peter Raymont, Tracey's widower and former filmmaking partner, through his production studio White Pine Pictures, the award is presented annually at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; however, the award is not limited to documentary films, but may be awarded to films in any genre, and films do not have to have been screened as part of the Hot Docs program to be eligible.
Lisa Rideout is a Canadian filmmaker. She is best known for her work on the documentaries Sex with Sue, Take a Walk on the Wildside and One Leg In, One Leg Out.
Fire of Love is a 2022 independent documentary film about the lives and careers of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Directed, written, and produced by Sara Dosa, the film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, where it won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. It was released on July 6, 2022, by National Geographic Documentary Films and Neon. It received acclaim from critics, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
Ali El Arabi is an Egyptian producer and director, who was born in Dakahlia, Egypt. He grew up practicing kickboxing and won Egypt's national kickboxing championship. He became passionate about filmmaking when he moved to Cairo. In 2009, he made his first foray into the filmmaking world when he met some staff members at ZDF channel who discovered his talent. Afterwards, he traveled to Germany to study filmmaking and production and began his career at ZDF channel where he made a number of documentaries on war zones in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kurdistan.
Geographies of Solitude is a Canadian documentary film by Jacquelyn Mills that was released in 2022. The film is guided by Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who lives on Nova Scotia's Sable Island, where she catalogues the island's wild Sable Island horses, and endeavours to preserve its unique ecosystem.
Aurora's Sunrise is a 2022 adult animated documentary film directed by Inna Sahakyan. It is based on the life of Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian Genocide survivor who after her escape became an actress in the United States. The film includes short scenes of the film Auction of Souls, a silent film from 1919 on the Armenian Genocide, in which Aurora Mardiganian had the leading role.
Batata is a Canadian-Lebanese documentary film, directed by Noura Kevorkian and released in 2022. The film is a portrait of Maria, a Syrian woman working in Lebanon whose life is upended by the Syrian civil war and its associated refugee crisis.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a 2023 documentary film written and directed by Anna Hints in her feature directorial debut. It is about a group of women who gather in a smoke sauna where they clean the dirt from their ashamed and aching bodies. It was selected as the Estonian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. It is a co-production between Estonia, France and Iceland.
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