Two Homelands, One Story: Emile Parseghian

Armenia, spring 2021. Léon, a French-Armenian, returns to his homeland to attend the funeral of his cousin Hrant, who was killed six months earlier on the front lines of the 44-day war. This is the story at the heart of FOR THOSE, a film by director and screenwriter Emile Parseghian. In 2022, Parseghian graduated from France’s prestigious national film school, La Fémis. His work often brings together his two homelands—Armenia and the south of France—serving as a foundation for stories about identity, belonging, and memory.

In an interview with Kinoashkharh.am, Emile Parseghian speaks about the making of FOR THOSE, the identity he has shaped between his two homelands, his personal approach to addressing the 44-day war, the cinematic language of loss, and his upcoming projects.

 -The South of France and Armenia are sensorially and visually distinct, yet both share a warm, sun-drenched geography. How have these two environments shaped your directorial vision and storytelling style?

-For me, the connection between my two places of origin works on two levels. First, there is, of course, the environment: the omnipresence of the sun, the sometimes harsh landscapes, the beauty of the light (which I miss now that I live in Paris). But I also feel that they share something much deeper, especially when it comes to the way we express emotions and interact with one another, particularly within families.

I grew up in a very warm atmosphere, but one in which expressing feelings was complicated, especially for men. This tension, both sensorial and emotional, between warmth and emotional detachment dictates much of my worldview and, consequently, my work.

-Having “two homelands” can sometimes mean searching for a sense of belonging everywhere. How much of your personal experiences and your own feeling of “return” did you reflect in the character of Léo?

-While the movie is not exactly autobiographical, it very much comes from my experience as someone born to an Armenian father and a French mother. I grew up in a small town where there was no diaspora community whatsoever, while on my dad’s side, almost everyone lives in Armenia. As such, I never really experienced the middle ground that children from cities with strong diaspora communities, such as Lyon or Marseille, might know.

As a result, my identity has always felt, and still feels, very fragmented: I feel French in Armenia, Armenian in France, at home and a stranger at the same time in both countries. When you add the question of language, as I speak very little Armenian, the question of belonging becomes even more complicated.

Over the past few years, I have felt increasingly at peace with these questions, as I have embraced the impossibility of belonging completely somewhere as a strength. But the question still fascinates me, and that is what Léon is still going through.

-Addressing grief, loss, and memory in the aftermath of the 44-Day War carries immense responsibility, especially for a young director. What proved to be the most challenging aspect for you during the screenwriting process and on set?

-It took me a very long time to actually start writing the script, as I struggled to find the right point of view. I didn’t feel legitimate addressing the question from an entirely Armenian perspective, as a diaspora Armenian myself. The only way I felt I could tell this story was to stay as close as possible to my own perspective, and to approach this period through the emotions I experienced myself: sadness, anger, but, more importantly, guilt.

When I came back to Armenia in March 2021, all those emotions mixed together and made me reconsider my identity and my sense of belonging, which had developed over my previous stays. This very long period of maturation led to a relatively short screenwriting process, as everything emerged quite naturally.

Towards the end of the writing process, setting up a co-production with our Armenian co-producers, Fermata Film Studio, helped me resolve a couple of points I was still uncertain about through discussions around the script. Furthermore, I wanted to shoot the movie in a way that was coherent with its ideas and themes. As a result, we managed to build a wonderful Franco-Armenian cast and crew: roughly one-third of the team was French, with the rest being Armenian. This allowed us to bring together the perspectives of outsiders and of people who were directly connected to the subject matter.

-The film’s title, Pour Ceux (FOR THOSE), is deeply evocative and multi-layered. Who are “they” to you, and what message does the film convey to those left behind?

-To be honest, the title came to me in a very strange way. While writing the first draft, I was listening to one of my many random music playlists and came across a classic French rap song from the 2000s, also called Pour Ceux. The song has NOTHING in common with my movie: it’s very energetic, fun, and laid-back. But the title somehow stuck with me, and it hasn’t changed ever since.

The plural “THOSE” (Ceux) refers both to those who died and to those who remain behind and have to deal with loss and grief. For me, the entire movie is about the relationship between the dead and the living, and the strange strategies we, as those who are alive, have to find in order to deal with these questions.

To me, everyone in the movie feels that they are doing the “right” thing “for those” who died, but their definitions of what is right differ vastly. This is at the root of the central conflict of the movie, but I tried to keep the perspectives balanced: neither Léon nor Tigran is right or wrong. Their reactions are the consequences of their identities and upbringing, and both are, at least I hope, understandable.

-Cinema often approaches the aftermath of war through intense melodrama or complete silence. What cinematic language did you choose to portray grief and loss?

-Of course, my approach was heavily influenced by films (Pialat’s The Mouth Agape and Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral for example), but I tried to find what was specific to my subject and build the film around that.

Having grown up in two cultures, I experienced loss very differently on the two sides of my family. On my Armenian side, I was very struck by the importance of rituals (the 40-day beard, covering mirrors) as a way of organizing and making sense of the absurdity and cruelty of death.

But in the end, pain and sadness would always come back to the surface, often for very short periods of time and in a very sudden way. Very quickly, the form of the movie came to me: a small number of setups, mostly using wide shots, with little movement or slow pans, to represent the structured period of grieving. At the same time, I wanted to let time pass within those shots, eventually allowing the emotion to emerge.

-La Fémis is one of the world’s premier film schools, steeped in the rich tradition of French cinema. How was this Armenia-set story received at the school and within the French film community?

-I graduated four years ago as a producer, not a director, so this was not a student project but a produced short film, although it is my first film.

The funding process went relatively well, but I encountered contrasting reactions in some of the feedback from the various grants and funds we applied to. People often expressed curiosity about the subject, and about Armenia in general, as a “not-often-talked-about” subject, to quote them. At the same time, a lot of the feedback reflected a deep lack of understanding of the context and the framing of the film.

That is what eventually forced me to add contextual cards at the beginning of the movie, even though I wanted to avoid them as much as possible.

As for the reception of the movie itself, I’ve received good feedback from the people I’ve shown it to, but I’m still waiting to show it to a French audience, hopefully soon !

-What doors or bridges did this co-production between France, Belgium, and Armenia open, and is this a model you plan to pursue for future projects?

-As I mentioned earlier, setting up a French-Armenian co-production was crucial to me. Even though we didn’t apply for funding in Armenia, it was important not only for us to be able to shoot the movie, but also to ground it. While I was at first anxious about the way it would work, my French and Armenian cast and crew members got along very well and quickly, which was beautiful to see as someone with a foot in both cultures.

Belgium came on board later and allowed us to have high-quality sound post-production, which, sadly, got a little lost in the copy shown in Yerevan in July.

I was really happy with this three-country process, as it exposed me to very different working cultures and forced me to step outside my comfort zone. I hope to replicate this approach in my future projects as well.

-Pour Ceux marks your first step in short filmmaking. Will this serve as the foundation for a feature directorial debut, and what themes are currently captivating your interest?

-I’m currently working on a number of projects. I hope to shoot two short films in 2027 and 2028, which are currently in development and funding. The question of identity and belonging is also central to those projects, but that’s about the only common point they share with Pour Ceux, as one is a satirical political comedy and the other is a film noir about teenagers. Both will be shot in France and (mostly) in French.

At the same time, I’m also deep in the development of my first feature film, which is loosely based on Pour Ceux. It takes place over five years and is, at least I hope, a little less dark.

Vova Arzumanyan