By Sonya Dymova
Katia Guiragossian’s “Missak and Mélinée Manouchian” will make its U.S. debut at the Arpa International Film Festival, set to screen at Hollywood’s Harmony Hold Theater on October 26. A nominee in feature-length documentaries, the movie is set to receive the Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award.
Guiragossian’s documentary examines the lives of the Manouchians, starting with the Armenian Genocide, then delving into their fight against the Nazi forces in France.
Missak Manouchian became the head of a Parisian group of foreign Resistance fighters, FTP-MOI. The organization led dozens of anti-Nazi attacks and sabotage operations in 1943, including the assassination of a top German colonel.
Stateless from escaping the Armenian Genocide, Manouchian – along with 23 of his fellow fighters – was vilified as an immigrant criminal in France. Manouchian became a part of the infamous “Affiche Rouge,” or the “Red Poster” – a piece of Nazi propaganda against immigrant fighters who were later executed.
“If French people pillage, steal, sabotage and kill, it’s always foreigners who give the orders; it’s always the unemployed and professional criminals who carry out the acts; and it’s always the Jews who inspire them,” a pamphlet accompanying the poster read.
Manouchian’s story mirrors and represents that of many other foreign resistance fighters, mostly Jews from Central and Eastern Europe but also Spaniards, Italians and other Armenians.
Last February, French President Emmanuel Macron honored the Manouchians as their bodies were transferred to the Pantheon – a mausoleum housing France’s national heroes — making them the first foreign and first communist Resistance fighters to be inducted into the monument.
The names of 23 other members of resistance fighters – most of whom were executed by the Nazis at the Fort Mont Valérien on Feb. 21, 1944, alongside Missak Manouchian – are to be engraved in the vault where the couple was laid to rest.
“Missak Manouchian, you enter here as a soldier with your comrades, those of the poster, of the Mont Valérien, … and with all your band of brothers who died for France,” Macron said at the induction, extending the honors to the whole group of long unacknowledged foreign fighters.
“A grateful France welcomes you, Missak and Mélinée,” he added. “The France of 2024 owes you this honor.”
The documentary’s director, Guiragossian, is Mélinée Manouchian’s grandniece. She said one of her goals in making the film was to tell this big story “through the prism of the small, intimate story” of Manouchians – that of survival, fight for justice, sacrifice and belonging.
“I’m particularly pleased and moved that the documentary has been nominated for the Apa Film Festival,” Guiragossian said. “I think it’s a place where you can discover a profoundly human cinema that asks questions.”
The dedication at the movie’s end reads: “À tous les combattants de la Liberté,” which translates to “To all the Freedom fighters.”
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