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At its 154th meeting held from 12 to 15 March 2019 in Bucharest, the Board of Management of the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund agreed to provide support to Aurora's Sunrise, an Armenian-German co-production directed by Inna Sahakyan.

A film project by Yerevan-based Bars Media Documentary Film Studio, Aurora’s Sunrise will be awarded with €140,000, a 24 percent of its total budget, Kinoashkharh reported, citing Armenia’s representative to Eurimages Susanna Harutyunyan.

According to her, this is the first majority Armenian film project to receive funds from Eurimages.

Overall, the fund agreed to support 15 fiction films, 2 documentaries and 1 animation project for a total amount of €4,397,000.  

An animated documentray, Aurora's Sunrise tells the harrowing story of Aurora Mardiganian, one of the biggest celebrities of the Golden Age of silent film. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide, she was a refugee turned actress, and the unlikely star of one of the highest grossing films of the day. She was also a face of a parallel humanitarian campaign for victims of the genocide, which raised over $30 million ($500 million adjusted for inflation) -- then the largest such fundraiser in American history.

At the peak of her fame she was admired by diplomats, politicians, industrialists, and other movie stars. Charlie Chaplin and President Woodrow Wilson were among her fans. But just five years after the film had packed movie theatres across the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, it disappeared. The newly established Turkish Republic and the U.S. government struck a political alliance that included silencing testimonies of the Armenian Genocide.

One hundred years later, Aurora’s Sunrise is using unique archival interview footage, breathtaking animation, and recently re-discovered segments of Aurora’s original silent film to resurrect this long-forgotten story and return it to the silver-screen. From her brutal teenage years, to her stunning Hollywood rise, and to her eventual fading from public life, the film pays tribute to Aurora’s story by telling it in her own words. Parallel to this, it exposes the political conspiracy behind her fall from fame and the disappearance of her film, exploring the intersection of power and propaganda in the rise of the American empire.