INDIE SPOTLIGHT: Interview with ‘Amerikatsi’ Filmmaker Michael A. Goorjian

In 1948, decades after fleeing Armenia to the US as a child, Charlie returns in the hopes of finding a connection to his roots, but what he finds instead is a country crushed under Soviet rule. After being unjustly imprisoned, Charlie falls into despair, until he discovers that he can see into a nearby apartment from his cell window - the home of a prison guard. As his life unexpectedly becomes entwined with the man's, he begins to see that the true spirit of his homeland is alive in its passionate people. Filled with warmth and humor, Amerikatsi celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the bonds that unite us all.

The amount of warmth, tenderness, and humor that filmmaker Michael A. Goorjian brings to such an unfathomable time in history is delectable. The atrocities that the Ottoman Empire and Soviet Union brought upon the Armenian people and their country are horrific. As a great storyteller and observer, Michael gives voice to the voiceless and art to the masses of his community, in his film Amerikatsi. The film is a history lesson and cinematic exploration neatly wrapped in its 115-minute viewing time. 

Throughout his decades-long career, Michael has worked with some of the best of the best in film and television, and as a student of film, you can see those influences seep into his visual style and tone as a director and screenwriter. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did this specific come about and what was your approach to fleshing out these various characters?

Michael A. Goorjian: I wrote the script in 2018. And it was a few different things that kind of that sort of merged together at the beginning. One was, I'd had this story that a Ukrainian friend of mine had told me about someone he knew in prison, who could see into an apartment building near the prison, and there was a man living there. And for years, he would just watch this other guy's life. And that always struck me as being something very poetic about it. So, there was that.

And then in 2018, there was a revolution in Armenia, the Velvet Revolution, where Pashinyan, who was a journalist, led a revolt against the administration that was, by all accounts, very corrupt, basically, ex-KGB, Soviet people that after most of the Soviet countries fell, the people that got put in charge were essentially still Soviet. I was so inspired by what was going on, and seeing a lot of young people going back to Armenia, that I started to look into repatriation, and started to learn about the fact that for almost 100 years, there have been these waves of Armenians that have repatriated back to the country.

In particular, during the Soviet period, right after World War Two, Stalin had reached out to all these Armenians and said, 'Come back to your homeland, help rebuild it.' And sent all this propaganda out, which was all lies, and many Armenians went, and it was quite tragic. There were so many problems, not just with Soviets, but also with the differences between the Eastern Armenians, Armenians that were Sovietized and had been living under the Soviet regime; and these Westerners showing up with money and different dialects and attitudes. And the clashes between these were also awful. And so, learning about those two things is where kind of I started to develop the script.

Getting more into what you were asking about the characters - the script that I originally wrote really was mostly from Charlie's point of view, mostly it was Charlie's story - a story of someone who is part of the diaspora longing for their homeland, longing for their heritage, their roots, and going and trying to find that home. And that is something that isn't just Armenian, that's any immigrant, that's their story in a way. 

What I didn't initially include, or it wasn't a part of the script, at first, really was Tigran's story, the guard in the film, and that developed the more time I spent in Armenia, when I went there to scout and then in pre-production, learning from Armenians there who had grown up during the Soviet Union. And the more I learned about their story, the more I realized how important it was to tell both sides; to not just tell the story of someone longing for their home, but for Armenians, which, you know, we've been through so much, but there's this sort of primal divide in the culture; there are two churches, literally, there are two dialects, there's the East in the West. 

So, post genocide, all the Armenians that spread out in the world and the Armenians that stayed in Armenia as part of the Soviet Union, developed in different directions. And as part of the diaspora, there is very little that I knew about, about that other side. And the more I was there, the more I realized that has to be part of the story as well, which is here is Armenians that had their culture, they were living in the homeland, but they had their culture like cut away from them. 'You're not Armenian anymore, you're Soviet citizens.' And even changing their names or the Russification of everything.

The practice of religion, we're the oldest Christian country, and this thing in the film is actually a true story of the character Tigran being potentially sent to Siberia. This happened to the father-in-law of Patrick Malkassian, one of our producers, his father-in-law was sent to Siberia simply for painting pictures of churches. I mean, that's how crazy it was.

But then the development of the characters and everything, besides Charlie, all of the local Armenians and everything, I just really looked to everybody I was working with, to really help fill out who these people were. And even though I can't hear it, there's a language expert at USC, who saw the film and I did a talk with her and she was blown away by all of the dialects in the film - they are very specific - from the repatriates in the prison, to the way the guards speak when they're speaking to a Russian versus they way they speak when they're speaking Armenian with each other. There's a lot of nuances in there. And all of that came from all of the various artists that I had the pleasure of working with over there.

Sadie: That's incredible. Speaking of language, there’s a lot happening and being said through the dialogue and the way that it’s delivered. How did you approach tapping into humor in the most awkward situations? Or in this case, what was lost in translation?

Michael: Yeah, well, talking to people that have either grown up during the Soviet era, or had a lot of experience with it, there's such absurdity to what took place under Soviet Union. And it's one of those things that like, the number of forms that have to be filled out, just so you can use the restroom, things like that. It's just crazy. That absurdity really led me to kind of go, the best way to kind of approach this subject is with humor. It was a very fine line though, because one moment I'm running around with a stork egg, and the next moment, I'm being beaten and having my head shaved. So, to find the right balance of tone, where both sides could play together, took a lot of work. The music helped a tremendous amount. We had a composer Andranik Berberyan, his father was a composer, there's a Sovietness to the score that very much came from him, but also, it just helped find the feel. Baking things together. [laughs]

Sadie: Right? All the ingredients were there. Now on the flipside, there is a lot communicated without dialogue, and there’s a deep connection made between Charlie and Tigan, through their shared language of art. How did approach writing that on the page to then translating it to filming it?

Michael: Yeah, that was definitely a challenge. I mean, there is almost a mini play within a movie with what Charlie's watching and this apartment. I think, one aspect of it is having a lot of the film without dialogue, I liked that, from the standpoint of, I wanted to make a film that was as universal as possible. I mean, it's a foreign film, it's got different languages going on. But the more accessible it could be, the better from the standpoint of just some of my reasonings behind making the film, besides wanting to make a good film. I wanted to help Armenia. I wanted to help my culture and help expose who we are, what our culture is like, to help add to and go beyond some of the stereotypes that people, you know, if anybody even knows what Armenia is, often it's just stereotypical top layer things and to give more depth and context to who Armenians are and what the country is.

So, with that goal, making it as universal as possible, having as much of the film be without dialogue helped, in a way. But it definitely was challenging. We made a lot of choices. On the page, there are huge sections of the script, which is just literally a guy's face watching and his point of view, [laughs] not the most cinematic thing possible. We did a lot of work to try to take that challenge and find ways to bring it into a cinematic world.

Sadie: Why is it important for you to have made this film about your culture for your community, by your community?

Michael: Like a lot of cultures, Armenians can become a bit insular. We think the rest of the world knows the stuff that we're going through. But unless you're Armenian, you're really not aware of some of the things that are Armenian or taking place in Armenia. And in particular, right now, there's some very difficult situations with in Nagorno-Karabakh, we call Artsakh, that are terrible. And most of the world does not know about it.

I think for me, in terms of making a film, like this now, everything kind of routes back to the same thing, which is attention. Armenians need the world's attention. But you can't just get people's attention by going, 'Hey, look how much we're being beat up and tortured.' And I think by putting out art, by showing and expanding the world's idea of what Armenia is, and what our culture is, that is my contribution to the need of that attention. We need to share what's beautiful to us, what we love. I think that's going to help. But for me, making the film was rooted in that and hopefully, you know, in my small way I can help out in terms of expanding what people think of when they think of Armenia.

Amerikatsi is now playing in select Theaters in Los Angeles and New York City.