Genre
Synopsis
As pressure mounts to join an underground resistance movement against a totalitarian government, solitary coder (B) becomes obsessed with decoding unusual frequencies from a newly sprouted plant in their greenhouse. B slowly discovers that the frequencies are secret correspondences between their own ancestors, a group of Armenian resistors and practitioners of magic called Whisperers who lived through the Armenian Genocide in 1915. Their stories are told via Araxi, B's virtual assistant, who translates and transcribes chronicles of the Whisperers' lives as they survive on their own terms. This forces B to contend with a resurfacing of painful childhood memories, including their mother's brutal death on the frontlines of the last resistance. The stakes get higher when B's lover is kidnapped by the enemy and they are forced to collaborate with underground resistors to save her life.
Bio
Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary creative collaborator. Emily’s evolving artistic practice reflects her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family, and centers the decolonized narratives of women, especially from the SWANA region, and a deep commitment to the healing power of relational, ethical, collaborative storytelling. Her films includes the sci-fi short Transmission, which premiered at BFI FLARE Film Festival, the short documentary Motherland, which premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival and won the Best Short Documentary Award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival, and the feature documentary film, There Was, There Was Not, which has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the IDA, Chicken & Egg Pictures and HotDocs. Her immersive, multimedia installation Luys i Luso, created in collaboration with Tigran Hamasyan, has been exhibited in NYC (BRIC Arts), LA (Arts Activation fund recipient for public art), Istanbul (DEPO Gallery), Munich (Unterfahrt), Armenia, and Bulgaria (European Capital of Culture). Emily has been a Flaherty Seminar Fellow, a LA Public Arts Activation Fund recipient, A Locarno Film Festival Open Doors grant winner, a UnionDocs Summer Lab Fellow, a resident at the Yerevan Institute of Contemporary Art, and participated in the Torino Film Lab. She currently splits her time between the US and Armenia.
Credits
Executive Producer - Lilly Wachowski
