“My birthplace is beckoning me with a Lifetime Achievement Award… I am over the Pyramids with joy!”

That is how the Egyptian born, Armenian-French acting star Nora Armani announced the news that the 38th Alexandria Film Festival – which opened on Wednesday 5 October at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina – was granting her the honour, which bears the name of Egyptian star Mahmoud Hemeida.

“Amazing,” Armani wrote back when I approached her, pointing out that we share a Zodiac sign. “Two Virgos and two Noras!” But, even when they are born under the same sign, not all Noras can act in seven languages. Armani performs in English, French, Arabic, Italian, Armenian, Turkish and sometimes also Russian. She is a writer, director, producer and activist, as well as an actress, and her achievement is of global proportions.

Born in Giza, Nora Exerdjian is the daughter of Varoujan Exerdjian and Arminé Basmadjian. The name “Armani” was chosen to honour both her mother and her Armenian roots. A third-generation descendant of genocide survivors, Armani completed her primary education at the Noubarian Armenian School in Heliopolis, studying sociology and drama at the American University in Cairo and earning an MSc in sociology from the London School of Economics. In 2020, she received her MA in theatre and film studies from Hunter College CUNY.

Armani is the founding artistic director of the annual Socially Relevant Film Festival taking place in New York in March since 2013. But it is her innovative one-woman show On the Couch with Nora Armani that has earned her accolades all over the world.

An inspiring account of her own journey, it is a story of both collective and personal self discovery, and it uses comedy to take account of both happy and sad memories. The show was first performed in 2002 in London, where it was hailed by the Camden New Journal as an “insightful piece of theatre. The lyrical language. . . reflects her linguistic talents. Armani manages to fill the stage and gives an enlightening performance”. A French version soon premiered in Paris, and a sequel, Back on the Couch with Nora Armani, was staged in 2021. But this is not her only production.

Armani’s stage repertory includes Shakespeare, Shaw, Hammerstein, Molière, Chekhov, Guitry, Pinter, Labiche, Gallaire, Pirandello, Aslibekyan, and her own plays. Among her many works is the award-winning play Sojourn at Ararat (Le Chant d’Ararat), co-created with her theatre partner Gerald Papasian. The play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and went on to Avignon, in its English and French versions respectively. She produced films that have screened at the Cannes Film Festival (Haifa-Rashid Masharawi), Rotterdam, London, Paris, AFI Los Angeles, Edinburgh Festivals, and independently.

Armani is based in New York but she flew in from Paris. The last time she visited Egypt was in May 2021 and, before that, in December 2016. Both visits were intended “mostly to commemorate deceased members of the family”. This time the visit is special.

“It is most important to be appreciated by your own family and your own people as that is home, and coming home is the warmest of all feelings. The people closest to you are the most difficult to impress and therefore they are the most difficult to earn any appreciation from, because they’ve known you since you were a child, and sometimes they find it hard to accept that you have made progress or developed as an artist. Therefore this is a very special honour.

“My sincere thanks to the director of the festival film critic Al-Amir Abaza for this special honour, which brought tears to my eyes. I am immensely touched to have received an award in the city where I spent so many childhood summers, and in the country where I grew up, received my education, took my first steps on the stage and had my first roles on screen. It is a homecoming.”

I had the impression that Armani studied medicine at Ain Shams University before joining AUC, a strange start for an actress. “But I did not study medicine. I only did a year of pre-med and then I transferred. Studying medicine was not my choice. But as you know the Egyptian thanaweyya amma system is based on grade averages, and these assign you to your future faculty and university. I had always wanted to study literature and arts. But the family and social pressure was such that, being the top of my class, I was pushed into  science. Then of course, the average, 92.5 per cent which I got for my thanaweyya amma exam automatically assigned me to Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Medicine.

“After a few weeks I already knew I did not want to be there, but to transfer to the AUC, I needed to get at least a C grade, so I studied and passed, even the dissection of the cockroach and frog, and went to AUC with a number of transfer credits. That way I didn’t really lose time. Between the transferred credits and summer classes, I graduated at exactly the same time I would have, had I gone directly to AUC. I graduated with honours. I majored in sociology, and minored in English (actually acting and directing) and went on to take part in the theatre productions under David Woodman, and later under Trevor Vibert.”

Here as elsewhere in life Armani believes in personal identity. “Identity is an inseparable part of ourselves. It is what defines us, what makes us unique and special. No one else is me. I am no one else but myself. That is the only available identity for each one of us. The sooner we accept and embrace it the more authentic we can be and the better we can thrive and develop. If we try to be something or someone we are not, or try to fulfil someone else’s expectations, we will remain fake and a copy of something that is alien to ourselves. However, this is very difficult and as an artist we mature into this, because in society and in our artistic field pressure and expectations are very high. Each time I have not been true to myself, or have veered from being fully myself, I have paid the price.”

Armani divides her time between the US and France, but is Armenia on her schedule at all? And, considering that she is a film actress who grew up in Egypt, how does the Egyptian film industry affect her work? Does she still contribute to Egyptian cinema or TV?

“I have a film festival, the Socially Relevant Film Festival, which I founded in New York in 2013. We are celebrating its 10th anniversary in March. Every year, I need to be in New York at least from November-December through March, then I can feel a little freer and can go to Paris, where I work, do workshops, films, plays and, my solo show. It is not always as clear-cut as that, because as a film actor, I have to be where I’m needed. Sometimes that is London, sometimes it is Paris, or of course New York, where I am based most of the year. I recently was in Montreal and Toronto as well with my one-woman show Back on the Couch with Nora Armani, which I  had the honour of performing in a previous version at the Gomhureya Theatre in Cairo in 2005. Maybe it is time to bring it back one more time.

“Armenia is always on my agenda, but the last few years, with the exception of 2020 (Covid and war), I have been spending more time there. And this past summer I taught a summer semester, ‘Presence: Finding Your Voice’ at the American University of Armenia, as well as performing. A film I co-starred in with Serge Avedikian had a new premiere there, after its sound was re-mixed and it was colour-corrected.

“All through my childhood, I grew up on Egyptian films. I remember fondly the Friday afternoon ‘Arabic movie sessions on TV, which used to come on at 3:30 pm, when a very popular Arabic film would be broadcast. I loved Faten Hamama and her restrained and realistic performance. I identified very strongly with her. And when years ago I was in Cairo for the Cairo International Film Festival with my film Last Station, the Egyptian newspapers described me as ‘Faten Hamama’s Armenian lookalike’ – I was so happy and excited.

“There are so many good Egyptian actors, all very solid and natural. You can tell because when you switch the sound off, you can see how natural the acting is. I also liked Nour Al-Sherif, Hussein Fahmi, Gamil Rateb and Leila Eloui very much, as well as Lebleba. They all belong to a great generation of actors, and were the idols we looked up to and were inspired by. I later had the honour to share the screen with the late Gamil Rateb. There are some amazing younger actors now as well. Too many of them to name one by one. They are in no way any lesser than the international actors we see everywhere.

“In 2002 co-starred with Gamil Rateb, Salah Al-Saadani, Nermine Al-Fiki, and others on the TV series Al-Asdiqaa, directed by Ismail Abdel-Hafez. Unfortunately I was not able to stay on and continue to work in other series even though I was offered the opportunity, because a family tragedy made me leave Egypt and later, my own life changed and I went on to establish myself in New York, moving from Paris. I also starred alongside Mohamed Sobhi in the stage production of The King and I, in which I played the English instructor, opposite Sobhi’s King of Siam.”

Egypt did not figure in the SR Festival right away. “The festival started out as an anti-violence gesture, an initiative to screen an alternative form of entertainment to the violent films that take up so much screen time in the US, and are also copied elsewhere. A personal tragedy, in which I lost my very dear cousin Vanya Exerdjian and my uncle Jack Exerdjian to a horrible hate crime, triggered me to start this to honour  their memory and as a way to empower women and girls, a form of protest against the violence done to anyone, especially to women and girls. This remains an important aspect of our festival, although the festival has opened up to all forms of social issues. We have films on climate change, race issues, freedom of choice in society, ending poverty, disability, peace, spirituality, human trafficking, the power of art in social change, age, children, health issues, and more.

“Egypt did take part in the festival one year, and the winner was Ahmed Atef, with his film Dorra about the 2011 Revolution. There have been short films from Egypt as well.”

What about the criteria in selecting the festival films? “We select films that are submitted to us on the FilmFreeway platform. The criteria are first and foremost that a film has to have good production values and be well made, then right after and almost simultaneously, it has to have a social issue at its core. It should refrain from any gratuitous violence and useless special effects or noise that says nothing, and it should deal with real people’s lives and social issues in an artistic way accessible to a broad audience.

“A filmmaker,” Armani believes, more generally, “has to have something to say, and to know who their audience is. There are so many human-interest stories dying to be told, and yet, many filmmakers today resort to violence, guns, explosions, death, and sensationalism, thinking that these will sell. There is a lot more than can be said on this matter, but this question deserves an entire Master Class. What makes a good story and a good film cannot be summarised in a few lines or paragraphs.”

As to the comeback of her one-woman show, Armani says: “The original show tells my story of identity, belonging, multiple cultures, life coincidences, and family in general, but also focuses a lot on my Egyptian identity, growing up in Egypt, and Hollywood later. Last year, in November, after a year’s delay because of Covid, I was able to do a newer, re-written version at the UnitedSolo Theatre Festival in New York’s prestigious Theatre Row, and the show was reborn. In April and May of this year, I took it to Toronto and Montreal, and later in July I performed it in Armenia.

“I love all forms of acting and directing, neither stage nor screen. Each has its advantages and its fulfilling sides. I have also directed films. My short film Moving Stories is screening at the Alexandria Festival. This film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s Short Film Corner, and then went on to be screened in the official selections of a number of other festivals in London, Paris, Monaco, Los Angeles, New York, etc. Another one of my films as a filmmaker is iMigrant Woman, which went to a dozen or more film festivals, became finalist and semi-finalist at a number of them and earned me a Best Female Director of Shorts Award at the Toronto Independent Film Festival last year.

“However, on any given day, I’d rather be an actor than a filmmaker behind the camera. My acting credits are too many to list, but they all figure on my website and on my IMDb page. I also like scriptwriting, and I won a screenplay award from the Hubart Baals Fund at the Rotterdam Film Festival for the Al-Awda (The Way Back) which is a full feature. Maybe I can find a good producer and do it in Egypt as it is a semi-autobiographical story.

As a filmmaker the issues that concern Armani most are women’s status, identity, multiple cultures, personal stories, real situations, and all forms of social issues.

“But the dearest film to my heart as an actor is Deadline in Seven Days, because it was the first feature film I took part in after the independence of Armenia back in 1991. I played the lead. The film has recently been restored and is due to be re-released on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its first release. As to the closest film to my heart that I made that must be iMigrant Woman, which I adapted from the original Italian, and translated into English, adding a cast of women, and staging it on Zoom during the Covid lockdown. This is the film that got me the Best Female Director of Shorts Award.”

Armani believes her humanitarian work and her art “are interrelated and cannot be separated from one another. One feeds the other literally.” Advice to younger artists? “Be yourself, be true in your pursuit of your art, do not compromise, and know that perseverance pays off in the end. Longevity is a virtue in this business. If you give up, you will not be there when luck comes knocking on your door. Do not be like anyone else because the best person you can be is you.”

Armani’s next show is Mercedes and Zarouhi, another one-woman show she will be performing in New York. “I will be performing it in my own English translation of the Armenian original by Anush Aslibekyan, again as part of the prestigious UnitedSolo Theatre Festival, which is the biggest theatre festival of solo shows. It is about life behind the Iron Curtain under Stalin, told through the correspondence of two sisters, one of whom repatriated to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s from post-WW II Greece. It is about patriotism, shattered ideals, flickers of hope, and the joy of creating a new home and rebuilding a new homeland.

“I starred in the full production version of the play, Mercedes, in Armenia in 2015, directed by Hagop Ghazanchyan, which was later repeated in 2019 when I was in Armenia again, at the National Youth Theatre of Yerevan. Mercedes and Zarouhi is the monodrama version of the same story, with a slightly different angle. I am focused on it because, eventually, I will be touring Armenia with it in Armenian, and presenting it in French in Paris and other French-speaking countries where I have performed before.

On her future projects, Armani reveals “I am involved as a producer in two feature films, and will be acting in them as well. Also another Spanish co-production which will be shot in September of 2023. I am looking forward to the release of a film I recently acted in, Absolute Dominion, directed by Lexi Alexander which will be streamed on Netflix early next year. I am writing a new piece now, inspired by my grandmother’s life and her three sisters. And I pray for a long and healthy life, because I have many projects, and to do them all I need health, time, focus, and energy.”

*A version of this article appears in print in the 6 October, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.