Directed by Carla Garapedian, Screamers is the first of several special interest films the production company hopes to distribute in the United States each year.
In Screamers, Garapedian traces the history of modern-day genocide - and genocide denial - from the fertile “Holy Mountains” of Anatolia to the current atrocities in Darfur. The documentary is as shattering as it is powerful, which includes live performance footage and interviews with System Of A Down, the multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning rock band, all of whose members are of Armenian descent. The film is laced with seven of the band’s songs from “Holy Mountains” to “P.L.U.C.K.” to the #1 hit “B.Y.O.B.” that illuminate the band’s views on political and social issues.

Screamers came together in the summer 2004 after producer McAlevey (“Radio Flyer,” “Shadow Hours”) approached System Of A Down’s legendary producer Rick Rubin about partnering with the band to make a documentary about one of their main causes – recognition of the Armenian genocide.

With Rubin’s support, Garapedian met System Of A Down, who endorsed the film’s important message -- how the world’s denial of the Turk’s Armenian genocide contributed to the continuing crisis of international genocides ever since – from Armenia to Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and present-day Darfur.

The cameras followed the band on their European and American tours last summer and fall as they promoted their new, two-album set, “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize.” (Their collective record sales have totaled over 16 million albums worldwide.) In the US, they attempted to track down House Speaker Dennis Hastert, visited a 100-year-old survivor and, most importantly, spent time with lead singer Serj Tankian’s grandfather, one of the few remaining eyewitnesses of the genocide.

Finally, just this spring, seven months after staging a protest rally at Dennis Hastert’s offices in Illinois (dubbed “Dennis, Do the Right Thing”), Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan confronted Hastert in the Capital Rotunda … luckily, the cameras were there.

With an ending filmed in the actual village in Turkey where the massacre of Tankian’s ancestors began, set against the ghostly strains of the hit “Holy Mountains,” the film comes full circle from 1915 through the horrors of 20th and 21st Century genocide in Darfur … to a finale of ghostly images of real ancestors that will never be forgotten.

Excerpts of Screamers were shown in Congress in April of this year. The World Premiere of the film will occur at the upcoming AFI Film Festival.

Screamers is produced by Nick de Grunwald, Tim Swain, Carla Garapedian and Peter McAlevey, Screamers is set for a limited release in Los Angeles, CA on December 8th,

Stay Tuned for more details soon.

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