Feature Film Mayrig Review

Mayrig is a feature film about Armenian immigrant family living in France, shortly after they have emigrated from their motherland - Armenia. Set on the streets of 1920-ties in Marseilles, France this film shows different aspects of life and struggles of an Armenian family.

You can access this movie on Youtube

A chapter or some 30 minutes is dedicated to Armenian Genocide in 1915 - when Ottoman empire humiliated, starved and mass killed a large population of Armenian people.

Mayrig movie is about a mother. As far as my Armenian language knowledge reaches - Mayrig, means mother in the Armenian language. 

The story is told by young Armenian boy - Azad Zakairian, who later becomes a famous director of theater and changes his name to Pierre Zakar. He never forgets his native Armenia.

There is a great scene in this film when young Azad together with other French schoolboys attends Sunday school at French Catholic Church, and pastor impacts to schoolboys - There can be no forgiven without Catholics Church,  young Azad silently in his thoughts replies to the pastor:

Armenian Apostolic church was built 17 centuries before Rome Catholic church

In movie Mayrig - a little is pictured Armenia, there are scenes of Mount Ararat (over-day Turkey), Etchmiadzin Cathedral.

Mayrig  is released on 1991 and it may be viewed as a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by French-Armenian film-maker Henri Verneuil.

This movie is available also in French on Youtube

About Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally by Armenians, as Medz Yeghern  was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups such as the Assyrians, the Greeks and other minorities were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.