Genre: Biography. Court Drama. History.
Logline: Based on the astonishing true story of Armen Tehlirian, irony rules post-war Berlin in 1921 when a mass-murdering maniac from the World War I, is stalked and assassinated by one of the few survivors of a genocide he engineered in 1915, and after a sensational trial the victim-turned-assassin is acquitted of the murder by a Berlin jury, despite a full confession!
Quick Pitch
Official court records and world news accounts from 1921 Germany reveal the truth about the cold-blooded murder of the Ottoman Empire’s most powerful leader from World War I, “Young Turk” Mehmet Talaat Pasha. It is a double-dose of irony when Armen Tehlirian survives the near-extermination of his whole Armenian race in 1915 by Talaat’s fanatical and barbaric “Young Turk” triumvirat. Then 12 years old, Armen survives his death march through the Turkish-Syrian desert only to be machine-gunned into a pit at the end. Seriously wounded, somehow Tehlirian lives and is able to dig his way out of a pile of half-buried corpses. Then he is taken in by Bedouins and grows into a fierce commando fighter.
For the next 7 years Tehlirian leads a suspense-filled life underground, fighting to re-establish Armenian independence while never giving up his search for the architect of the Armenian genocide, Talaat. On the witness stand Tehlirian recounts how he finally locates the murderous maniac hiding in Berlin, Talaat’s “safe haven” for the quarter-century since masterminding the genocide. He relives the decades-long struggle along with his methodical stalking of Talaat, and detailed plans to execute him. Finally he describes step by step how he approaches and guns down the mass-murdering Turk on the dark Berlin street.
Incredibly, during the rise of open Aryan racism, and despite a full confession of stalking and killing Talaat, the tortured genocide survivor is cleared of all charges by the German jury after a stunning trial. These events are corroborated by police reports, eyewitness testimony, many concurrent newspaper articles and almost-impossible-to-find court records that were recently obtained, and describe the whole true account of the Armenian patriot and/or “assassin,” Armen Tehlirian, with facts verified and story rights secured.