YEREVAN, Armenia — Elen Hakobyan (BAEC ’26) is a senior student in the Bachelor of Arts in English and Communications (BAEC) program at the American University of Armenia (AUA). A model and influencer born and raised in Yerevan, Elen’s perspective shifted significantly after spending a year as an exchange student in New York. “Surprisingly, that experience led me to love and appreciate my culture and country more,” she says. “Coming back to Armenia I wanted to find a space where I could embrace my nature of speaking my truth while learning how to use that side of me in more practical aspects of life. That’s when I discovered AUA’s BAEC program and decided in a split second that it was where I wanted to study.”
Throughout her four years at AUA, Elen found numerous reasons to appreciate her choice. A turning point came during her third year in the Topics in Cinema course. While she initially joined the class because she enjoyed being in front of the camera, a group project filming a short horror movie, revealed a new passion. She realized she didn’t just enjoy being a performer, but also loved the entire process: filming, editing, and making the minute choices necessary to captivate the audience.
That same semester, another course left a lasting impact: Modern Turkey, taught by Dr. Varuzhan Geghamyan. Elen felt a spark to create something that blended her creative side with the “unspoken,” though the exact subject remained elusive until a conversation on a rooftop changed everything. The inspiration for her senior capstone project arrived while sitting with three friends from Artsakh — Artur, Gevorg, and Grigor. As they discussed the loss of Artsakh, Artur and Gevorg shared for the first time that they had participated in the 44-Day War.
“While my body was shivering from the stories they told, the guys were laughing,” Elen recalls. “They were covering their sadness by mocking the physical and mental traumas they endured, including the 70 days when Artur went missing. I cried my heart out, while Artur and Gevorg laughed, and Grigor remained silent. It hit me then: I had to talk about the war inside every man who has experienced war.”
Elen’s documentary aims to explore the emotional pressure and instability men face across different cultures and conflicts. She observed a universal thread: a struggle to process trauma simply because they were never taught how. Beyond her own questions of “Why?”, she wanted to provide a safe space for these men to move past the defense mechanism and truly feel their pain, ultimately giving viewers the permission to cry it out rather than pressing their emotions down.
Elen’s BAEC education and conducting sensitive interviews for her documentary heavily influenced her perspective. “One idea that I’m stuck with is that the choice of words matters,” she says. “The right word can bring a person close enough to open up, while the wrong word can cause them to close down completely.” To ensure the safety of her interviewee and the credibility of her storytelling, Elen has integrated professional support into the process. She works with a personal therapist and a specialist who reviews her interview questions and remains present during filming for emotional reassurance. This choice has made her storytelling approach far more credible and harmless than it would have been otherwise.
The project, which currently includes interviews with men from Artsakh and Syria, has faced its share of logistical and emotional hurdles. A planned interview with an interviewee from Kashmir was postponed after a family tragedy caused him to close down emotionally. Furthermore, Elen’s commitment to visual storytelling means she is holding out for an in-person interview rather than settling for an online call. She has expanded her scope to include a subject from Lebanon and is currently searching for a Palestinian native living in Armenia..
Despite these hardships, Elen is undeterred in her mission to make people aware of the feelings tied to the “stabilized” and “degraded” wars that are out of the control of the “unsung heroes” who fight them.
As she nears graduation, Elen offers a piece of advice to incoming students: “Never limit yourself to the expectations of other people. You chose a program that gives you the opportunity to be great in so many different ways. Grab that chance and cling to it tight enough to let your creativity flourish. Use it to create things that will have an impact and even change rooted ideas stuck within our beautiful culture.”
Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.