Everything started from a university Capstone project...

"Still in those deserts" is essentially an extended version of my Capstone creative project centering around the topics of Armenian Genocide trauma and collective memory.
Having the idea of visualising Armenian Genocide trauma, I chose the medium of film to reflect its emotional manifestations through the story of a single character.]
I started doing my research on the topic and reading autobiographical works by Armenian authors, who were descendants of Genocide survivors. After that I wrote the script for the film and assembled the creative team to help me realize it to life. Overall, the pre-production, the production, and the post-production of the film took over a year, which was quite an exhausting period of time for a debut film realization.

Speaking about national trauma and losses and embracing them is one of the ways to empower a nation, but, unfortunately, with the predominance of the victimhood culture among Armenians, this collective trauma effect is not being cured or dealt with, instead being passed down generationally and affecting the lives of thousands of Armenians.

I argue that there is great importance in studying this topic, as the recent events once again showed that history likes to repeat itself. And if Armenians were ethnically cleansed once, that doesn't mean that that wouldn't happen again in the future. But it's not possible to proceed and fully develop as a nation until we acknowledge the deep traces that the Armenian Genocide has left in our collective memory, characterizing our national identity with a victimhood mentality, resistance to denial and traumatic fear that
is present in our national psyche to this day.

And my film, that I wouldn’t have been able to produce without my amazing team of creators, was going be our attempt to visualize this pain, hopefully making it more crucial, less distant, and relatable for our Armenian compatriots, many of whom don’t realize that they have transgenerational genocide trauma. More importantly, I hoped it would eventually act as a channel between the collective Armenian experience and the people outside of the Armenian community, who don’t fully grasp the Armenian genocide perspective.