I was first introduced to the work of documentary filmmaker and writer Suzanne Khardalian during my postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. A colleague of mine was teaching a comparative genocide course on women’s experiences of trauma and wanted to include the Armenian Genocide in her syllabus. She told me she had just seen Grandma’s Tattoos, a documentary by Khardalian. The film explored the stories of her grandmother—and other Armenian women—marked by tattoos that stood as reminders of their genocidal trauma.
I can still remember the cold but enraged feeling that came over my body when I watched this film for the first time—as if every vein in my body was ready to join the fight for my foremothers and to follow Suzanne on her quest to tell their stories. Like Suzanne in the film, I felt shocked to discover the unfathomable layers of trauma these women suffered—how marks of blue ink silently documented an entire history of pain, standing as lifelong reminders of their scars; the maps of their suffering etched on their bodies forever. I remember being so grateful to Suzanne for including me in her matriarchal history.
Over a career spanning decades, Khardalian’s commitment to amplifying women’s experiences lies at the core of her work. The majority of her films challenge a genre that in the past consistently relied on patriarchal frameworks to depict trauma. After almost 40 documentary films, Khardalian’s body of work can undeniably be categorized as an archive—a chronicle of silenced stories that advocate for the power of women’s voices in both the telling of trauma and their often-unacknowledged acts of resilience that follow.
Khardalian’s groundbreaking 2011 documentary, Grandma’s Tattoos, stands as a powerful testament to this commitment. The film delves into the harrowing fate of thousands of Armenian women and girls who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide, only to be forced into sexual slavery and often tattooed as marks of ownership by their captors.
Khardalian’s own grandmother’s tattooed past serves as a deeply personal and haunting portal into this long-buried history. Through her lens, we gain intimacy with a chapter of Armenian Genocide history that has been silenced for so long. The camera leads us through this fragmented journey as Khardalian—alongside the women of her family—attempts to piece together her grandmother’s story. Like the camera, we remain on the outside, symbolically observing, learning and navigating a landscape of sparse clues.
We eventually learn that her grandmother refuses to tell her story. In fact, she refuses to speak about this topic at all. Her tattoos paradoxically carry the imprint of a shameful silence—of untold truths. We, like the other women in her family, are frustrated that we can’t gain access to her testimony. Even more, we are deeply saddened that women, like Khardalian’s grandmother, carried these secrets in and on their bodies for decades. How could we have not known this happened to them? Still, the body always keeps score—especially women’s bodies.
This tension—mirroring our own struggle to understand the insecurity and confusion around these women’s experiences—manifests visually in the film’s sharp cuts and protracted pauses. It is through Khardalian’s courageous, first-person perspective that we, as viewers, confront the enduring societal taboos surrounding sexual violence against women in conflict—and the double trauma that follows: survival, followed by societal shunning. For this, Grandma’s Tattoos stands not just as a historical excavation, but as an act of profound empathy—a rigorous and ardent assertion of the importance of women’s stories in understanding the full scope of human tragedy.
Khardalian’s dedication to women’s narratives extends beyond historical and Armenian accounts. Her 2024 film, Inside Her, Inside Me, focuses on the experiences of young Yazidi women who survived ISIS captivity. By giving these women a platform to share their stories, Khardalian continues to center marginalized female voices in the context of contemporary conflict and trauma. She allows them to speak their truths, reclaiming agency and challenging the dehumanizing narratives often imposed on victims of such violence. For example, as these women recount their escapes from captivity, the camera is angled straight, on their faces—like a direct confrontation with a silenced truth. We see not only the trauma of gendered violence, but the quiet strength and resilience it takes to confront the past and build a new life in Germany.
Beyond her thematic focus, Khardalian has made significant contributions to documentary filmmaking through her distinctive approach. Most notably, Back to Ararat (1988)—the first feature-length documentary to directly address the Armenian Genocide—navigated the complexities of memory and denial through a personal lens. It paved the way for more open and nuanced discussions of this historical trauma and earned her the Guldbagge Award for Best Film at the 24th Guldbagge Awards—the highest honor a film can receive in Sweden.
Khardalian is a pioneer of her craft. Her camera is not afraid to confront difficult and uncomfortable truths, and she consistently foregrounds the voices and faces of those whose stories have long been refused. Rather than simply observing from a distance or making their narratives secondary, women are central and essential to the visual stories she tells. Indeed, for Khardalian, centering the female experience is an insistence.
Her visual and emotional language directly mirrors the fractured nature of memory—the disjointed experience of trauma. She crafts narratives that challenge linearity, a choice that powerfully parallels how female bodies and their stories disrupt the very foundations of patriarchy. The violation of the female body is also an attempt to fragment the female self. These unspeakable acts—and their silencing—are confronted in Khardalian’s filmmaking as demands. Just as survivors must piece together their stories, so too must we piece together their fragments.
One great example is Khardalian’s film I Hate Dogs. In it, she deliberately structures the narrative so that the profound, traumatic source of the protagonist’s lifelong aversion to dogs is not fully revealed until the very end—demonstrating just how deeply buried and fragmented such memories can be.
It is important to note that Khardalian’s work has also set a standard for ethical documentary practice. Her respectful approach to these complicated subject matters—especially towards women and the affects of trauma—set a high standard for ethical engagement. While telling these women’s stories, she prioritizes their agency and ensures their stories are told with dignity.
When we recognize how women’s experiences are integral to our shared human history—and not merely extensions, footnotes or asides—we begin to understand how trailblazing Khardalian’s work truly is. Her camera visually reorients our gaze, placing women’s experiences at the core and ensuring their narratives command our attention. Khardalian’s work reminds us that the voices of women are not asides or annotations. They are a vital part of our collective consciousness.
Tamar Marie Boyadjian
