ERIC NAZARIAN: BUILDING CINEMA THAT HEALS — ONE STORY, ONE CITY, ONE COMMUNITY AT A TIME
Eric Nazarian doesn’t just make films—he constructs spaces for truth, pain, and healing to collide, emerging as urgent, unforgettable cinema. The Armenian-American screenwriter and director behind Tatanka, Die Like a Man, and Giants has long been preoccupied with themes of trauma, resistance, and resilience. But his work isn’t confined to the screen—it reverberates across communities, institutions, and generations.
Pain as Passport, Healing as Purpose
Pain as Passport, Healing as Purpose“For me, pain and resilience is the passport to empathy,” Nazarian reflects. “All great drama has an element of pain that must be overcome, embraced, resisted or healed.”
That conviction runs through all his work, whether it’s exploring the reverberations of genocide, systemic violence, or cultural erasure. As a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors and a child of Soviet repression, his connection to generational trauma is both lived and inherited.
“I have always craved stories… that have transcended hardship and suffering to find meaning and catharsis,” he says, citing Blues music, Shakespeare, and Kurosawa in the same breath. “That’s why I love stories of resistance fighters who battled great odds because they believed in healing and light over pain and darkness.”
From Page to Picture: A Craft Forged in Fire
Nazarian is one of the rare auteurs who straddles the rigors of screenwriting and the vision of directing with equal force. “Writing is the YIN and directing is the YANG. They complete each other,” he explains. “The film must be exploding in your mind’s eye as you read a script.”
After earning the Nicholl Fellowship for Giants, Nazarian adapted Three Christs for Jon Avnet—a harrowing and enlightening process. “It was the hardest adaptation I have done and the most informative to all of my other screenwriting,” he shares. His screenplays are crafted not just to tell stories but to evoke cinema in its purest, most immersive form.
“Cinema is too powerful a medium with so much untapped potential to be reduced to just the concept of ‘storytelling,’” he emphasizes.
Cinema as Social Arsenal
In Die Like a Man, Nazarian took his mission further, launching a grassroots filmmaking program for system-impacted communities. “The experience taught me that our underrepresented communities are intrinsically connected to cinema through generations of watching films and dreaming about them.”
By training participants in everything from casting to editing, Nazarian built more than a set—he built a proving ground for transformation. “My hope is for people viewing the film and those who were part of the making see the potential of picking up the movie camera instead of a gun,” he says. “And making films that heal instead of cause pain.”
Beyond Borders, Beyond Identity
In Tatanka, Nazarian worked with the Oglala Lakota community to tell a deeply spiritual story of survival and sacred connection. As an Armenian, he found kinship in shared histories of dispossession and resilience.
“When I was shooting Tatanka in Pine Ridge, I was deeply in a state of total spiritual connection with my beloved Oglala Lakota friends,” he shares. “This is the power of being human.”
Nazarian is adamant that cultural storytelling, when done with accountability and love, transcends the boundaries of origin. “That is the highest context of art for me—when an artist is so in tune with their humanity that they can go beyond their own cultural borders and make cinema that feels so authentic.”
Honored, But Not Finished
Recently named one of the 100 changemakers of Los Angeles by the Alta: A Human Atlas project at the Getty, Nazarian stands alone as the only filmmaker on the list—and the only Armenian.
“I was deeply honored,” he says, “and will continue to do all I can as a filmmaker to expand and deepen my work in telling human stories… that sincerely explore our trials, tribulations, and transcendences.”
Transform inner depths
Eric Nazarian doesn’t make movies. He moves people. Through the lens of suffering, he reveals paths to salvation—one film, one fellowship, one story at a time.
“Pain and healing—it always comes back to that”. And for those who witness his work, it’s clear: from trauma to triumph, cinema is his sacred ground.
