Seventeen films that document the Armenian genocide of 1915—all of them in English—have been made. This paucity of films about the Armenian genocide is owing to a paucity of certain types of documenting materials, which may be ascribed to several factors: the strict censorship in Ottoman Turkey at the time of the genocide, which prohibited the photographing of expulsions and death marches; the general absence of investigative reporters in war zones (which included parts of the Ottoman Turkish Empire) during World War I; and the scarcity of foreign consular agents and officials (who might have served as witnesses).

Nonetheless, a limited number of still photographs (of genocidal events in the making) managed to reach the outside world, owing to the efforts of Christian missionaries living in Turkey—and those of German civilians and soldiers who photographed events clandestinely. Two sources of photographic documentation were...