Coming to VOD tomorrow, Friday, February 19:
TRUTH TO POWER
Director:
Garin Hovannisian
World Premiere:
Tribeca 2020 (unscreened)
About:
A profile of the outspoken frontman of System of a Down, with a focus on his activism.
Filmmaker Garin Hovannisian offers a portrait of fellow Armenian-American Serj Tankian, a musician most popularly known for the band System of a Down, but who has become a surprisingly influential social activist, particularly around issues related to Armenia and the genocide perpetrated against its people by the Ottoman Empire – an event still officially denied by the modern Turkish government. The film blends a fairly standard rock biography with the more compelling, if sometimes overly laudatory, activist focus, demonstrating how Tankian pushed for official American recognition of the genocide, and, most notably how a 2015 System of a Down reunion concert in Armenia helped inspire opposition leaders to peacefully unseat the country’s authoritarian government three years later. These latter elements, however, often get somewhat lost in the doc’s more conventional behind the music thread, which will appeal most to Tankian’s existing fans and limit its potentially larger appeal.
