Work in Progress: ZAKO
Zako is a feature-length animated film produced by OnOff Studio, based on the graphic novel. The film tells the true story of Soviet Armenian painter Sargis Mangasaryan, who survived a Nazi POW camp during World War II by drawing portraits of his captors.
Directed by Tigran Arakelyan, the film aims to push artistic boundaries through an innovative visual language that blends VR tools such as Quill with classical CG rendering, creating an aesthetic close to a living graphic novel.
ZAKO is a feature-length animated film project based on a graphic novel and a true story of survival during World War II. The presentation focuses on the creative journey of transferring a deeply personal historical narrative from graphic novel to animation, and how story, pacing, and visual language can be adapted from page to screen.
Director Tigran Arakelyan introduces the geopolitical context of the time, a life shaped between Nazism and Soviet repression, and shows how documentary research, archival material, and survivor testimonies are translated into cinematic and animated form. The talk also presents the use of VR technology and Quill software as tools for immersive scene development and spatial storytelling.
Finally, the presentation reflects on the project’s resonance today and on what animation can achieve as testimony, art as survival, and animation as a living memory.
