The documentary “The Children of Vank” (Vank’ın Çocukları), telling the story of the Armenians who survived the Genocide and then went through another cycle of violence during the 1937-1938 bloody military campaign initiated by the Turkish state in Dersim region (currently Tunceli), will be screened in Yerevan on June 7.
Nezahat Gündoğan, the film director, who originates from Dersim and attempts to raise the untold stories of the massacre survivors, told a press conference today in Yerevan, suggesting the Turkish people themselves are the target auditorium of the film.
“They should reckon with the past pages of their history. The film features heroes in their live language, telling their stories without any author interferences, and the film, certainly, contains the Genocide word,” the film director said.
The premiere of “Children of the Monastery” was held on February 9 this year in Istanbul.
Kazim Gundogan and Nezahat Gundogan, the researchers of the movie, traced the Armenian survivors of these two genocides in the provinces of Konya, Bolu, Istanbul, Izmir, and Dersim and conducted interviews with them. Dozens of accounts and facts collected during the interviews spread a light on the fate of hundreds of Christian children who survived the Dersim massacre, were subjected to Turkification and grew up in Turkish or Kurdish families without their families knowing anything about it.
The film reflects on the story of the only Armenian St. Karapet monastery that operated in the area and whose clergy was arrested and killed along with Alevi and Armenian population of the village in the course of the massacres. The church was destroyed by the state in 1938.