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Noura Kevorkian

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Noura Kevorkian is a documentary filmmaker (writer, director, editor, and cinematographer). She has won numerous awards including a 2023 Peabody Award[1] for her 2022 film Batata, which is submitted for consideration to the 2024 Oscars in the Documentary Feature Category.

Early life and education

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Noura Kevorkian is a Lebanese Canadian Armenian filmmaker. Her Lebanese father, Barkev Kevorkian, was a machinist. Her Syrian mother, Dzaghig Kevorkian, is a homemaker. Kevorkian was born in Aleppo, Syria and raised in Lebanon until her emigration to Canada in her late teens. Kevorkian's upbringing has resulted in her being multi-lingual (Armenian, Arabic, English) and multi-cultural.

Kevorkian's father, Barkev, was the son of refugees, born in the Karantina refugee camp outside Beirut, Lebanon.[2] The son of Armenian genocide survivors who had been displaced from their ancestral home in Marash, Turkey, during the Armenian genocide (1915-1923), Barkev was forced to work at the age of nine. He self-learned to read English and soon mastered engineering and science books. He became a successful machine maker and supplied machine parts to various factories in Beirut, especially during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).

Kevorkian's family history and upbringing greatly influenced her work, resulting in a documentary about the Armenian genocide and the Lebanese Civil War entitled Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes[3] as well as a hybrid documentary-drama film about her father's late-age Parkinson's-like disease entitled 23 Kilometres.[4]

Kevorkian's family moved from Aleppo to Beirut when she was one year old. A few years later her family moved permanently to the small Armenian village of Anjar (Aanjar) in the fertile Bekaa Valley (Beqqa) region of eastern Lebanon. Here, Kevorkian grew up with her parents and four sisters. The five Kevorkian girls attended the Armenian Evangelical Secondary School in Anjar, established by German missionaries - Hillsbund - after the resettlement of the Musa Dagh Armenians in 1939. Kevorkian's film Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes depicts this idyllic time of her youth.

Kevorkian's films focus on women, social issues and human rights.[5] She is the granddaughter of survivors of the Armenian genocide. This inter-generational trauma has been well-established by medical/sociological research, and has informed her sense of identity, cultural pride, humanitarianism, and documentary storytelling / filmmaking.

Kevorkian's childhood was infused with the stories of her family, her relatives, and the countless elders of Anjar. She has personal experience of war violence and trauma, having lived through the Lebanese Civil War. Kevorkian went into self-exile to leave this violence and sought, in her late-teens, a new life as an immigrant to Canada. She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) in economics and finance, with minor studies in Middle East history and cinema studies from the University of Toronto. Kevorkian continued her filmmaking journey with training at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the Summer Institute of Film and Television (SIFT),[6] the Canadian Film Centre, Directors Guild of Canada, and other industry courses, programs and education.

Film career

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Kevorkian produces many of her films under her company Saaren Films.[7]

  • Batata (2022) writer, director, producer (125 min) is a feature documentary covering 10 years in the life of a Syrian woman named Maria and her family of potato farmers who find themselves stuck in Lebanon as stateless refugees.
Winner: Peabody Award (2023)[8]
Official entry: Academy Awards (2024) for Best Feature Documentary Film[9]
Winner: Best Feature Documentary Film Tanit d'Or – Carthage Filmfest (2022), Tunisia[10]
Top 10 Audience Award: HotDocs (2022), International Documentary Filmfest, Canada[11][12][13]
Winner: Amnesty Human Rights Award (2022) – Durban International Filmfest, South Africa[14]
Winner: Human Rights Award 'Tanit D'Or' (2022) – Carthage Filmfest, Tunisia[15]
Winner: Vanguard Award (2023) – Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC)[16]
Winner: Special Jury Prize (2023) - Malmo Arab Filmfest, Norway[17]
Winner: Best Pitch Award (2012) - Dubai International Filmfest, UAE[18]
Winner: Amnesty Award (2023) Durban International Filmfest, South Africa[19][20]
Honourable mention: Special Jury Prize (2023) - Directors Guild of Canada (Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary), Canada[21]
Nomination: Canadian Screen Award (2022) - Best Documentary Feature, Canada[22][circular reference][23][circular reference]
Nomination: Amnesty International Award (Human Rights) (2022), Thessaloniki, Greece[24]

Exhibitions

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  • Official competition: FIPADOC Filmfest, France
  • Official competition: HotDocs Documentary Filmfest, Canada
  • Official selection: Thessaloniki Filmfest, Greece
  • Official competition: Munich DOK.fest, Germany
  • Official competition: It's All True / É Tudo Verdade International Documentary Filmfest, Brazil
  • Official competition: Durban, International Filmfest, South Africa
  • Official competition: Kitzbühel, Filmfest, Austria
  • Official selection: Doc Edge, Filmfest, New Zealand
  • Official selection: Galway Film Fleadh, Ireland
  • Official competition: Carthage Filmfest, Tunisia
  • Official selection: Devour Filmfest, Canada
  • Official competition: Malmo Arab Filmfest, Norway
  • Official competition: Light House International Filmfest, US

Kevorkian won a 2022 Peabody Award for her film Batata,[25] and received three Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023, for Best Feature Length Documentary, Best Cinematography in a Documentary and Best Editing in a Documentary (with Mike Munn).[26]

She previously directed the documentary films Veils Uncovered (2002), Anjar: The Heroes of Musa Dagh (2007), Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes (2009) and 23 Kilometres (2015).[27]

References

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  1. ^ Voyles, Blake (September 12, 2023). "83rd Peabody Award Winners". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  2. ^ Kevorkian, Noura (April 27, 2022). "The Syrian refugee crisis still requires our urgent attention". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  3. ^ "Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes". IMDb. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  4. ^ "23 Kilometres". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  5. ^ Laing, Sarah (September 7, 2023). "Meet the 2023 Power List of Canadian Women in Film". Retrieved October 12, 2023.
  6. ^ "The Summer Institute of Film and Television". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  7. ^ "Saaren Films". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  8. ^ "Peabody Awards". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  9. ^ "Oscars 2024". 20 August 2023. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  10. ^ "Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  11. ^ "Hotdocs Top 20 Daily". 9 May 2022. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  12. ^ Mullen, Pat (May 2, 2022). "Batata holds top spot in hot docs audience awards race". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  13. ^ Greenleaf, Sarah (April 27, 2022). "Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Noura Kevorkian – 'Batata'". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  14. ^ Greenleaf, Sarah (April 27, 2022). "Canadian Armenian filmmaker Noura Kevorkian's "Batata" wins Best Amnesty Human Rights award at DIFF". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  15. ^ "2022 Winner Tanit d'Or". IMDb. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  16. ^ Tracy, Andrew (November 20, 2023). "Doc Institute names 2023 award recipients". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  17. ^ "MAFF 2023 Awards". 7 June 2023. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  18. ^ [citation needed]
  19. ^ "Awards Wrap". August 2, 2022. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  20. ^ "Durban International Film Festival". Facebook. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  21. ^ "Excellence in Documentary". IMDb. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  22. ^ "Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  23. ^ "11th Canadian Screen Awards". Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  24. ^ "Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival". IMDb. Retrieved September 12, 2023.
  25. ^ "Batata". Peabody Awards. June 20, 2023. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
  26. ^ Pat Mullen, "2023 Canadian Screen Award Nominations for Documentary". Point of View, February 22, 2023.
  27. ^ Melanie Goodfellow, "Noura Kevorkian, '23 Kilometres'". Screen Daily, December 10, 2015.
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