Mother

In 1921 an Armenian family fleeing Ottoman territory arrives in Marseille: Araxi the mother, Hagop the father, two aunts and their small son Azad. The film follows Azad growing up in France, being the foreigner at school, and the family giving up one thing after another in turn to keep him in education. It is not interested in the genocide itself. It is interested in the life built afterwards: the women sew, the father changes jobs, the boy is mocked at school for his name. The title says as much; mayrig is Armenian for mother. The form is broad period narrative: crowded family scenes, the sewing workshop, school corridors, the streets of Marseille. Gérard Torikian's score is the emotional spine. The film opens with the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, who killed Talat Pasha in Berlin in 1921, and moves from there to the family's arrival in Marseille. Henri Verneuil wrote and directed; the story is his own family's. He was the child of a family that fled the Armenian genocide and settled in France. Claudia Cardinale plays the mother and Omar Sharif the father. Who it is for: viewers who like family sagas, migration stories and period film. Who it is not for: anyone wanting history at a distance. The film is openly emotional and comes close to sanctifying the mother.