The Untold Story Behind ‘Monte’: How Seda Melkonian’s Blessing Opened the Door for the Film and Its Final Battle Scenes

Before Nono Sargsyan could make a film about Monte Melkonian, she needed the blessing of the person who knew him not as a commander or national figure, but as a husband.

Seda Melkonian’s approval became the first and most important step in bringing Monte to the screen, Sargsyan said. She had been warned that obtaining it would be difficult.

Others had approached Melkonian’s widow over the years, she was told, without success.

Still, Sargsyan made the call.

“I knew that if you have a goal, you have to pursue it and try,” she said. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, at least you know you did everything you could.”

That first conversation changed the course of the project.

Sargsyan said the two quickly established a warm relationship and a sense of trust. Seda Melkonian eventually gave her approval, followed by Monte’s brother, Markar Melkonian.

The answer Sargsyan had been hoping for also raised the stakes.

“For me, that was a source of great happiness and pride, but it also brought an enormous sense of responsibility,” she said.

Sargsyan, founder of Genetic Production and the creator and lead producer of Monte, said her relationship with Seda Melkonian has since become meaningful beyond the production itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3gIyEU8v8k

“Simply knowing Mrs. Seda and having someone like her in my life has been a great honor,” she said.

With the family’s support secured, work on the film began.

The idea for Monte predates that conversation.

Sargsyan said she had already decided to make a film about Melkonian while Genetic Production was working on Vazgen: The Last Sparapet, about Armenian military commander and former Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan.

The company was created with a broader purpose, she said: to produce a continuing series of films about major figures in Armenian history. Monte was planned as the second.

The film follows Melkonian, an Armenian-American who was born in California and became one of the most prominent Armenian commanders of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. He was killed in 1993 at age 35.

For Sargsyan, the challenge was not simply to recreate the familiar public image of Melkonian. The filmmakers wanted to portray the person behind it.

That challenge became particularly clear when casting the lead.

The production team knew what it wanted in its lead actor. Finding it proved far more difficult.

Sargsyan said Melkonian’s personality contained contrasts that an actor would have to carry convincingly. He could be strict and serious, but also playful, innocent and almost childlike.

“We knew the actor existed,” she said. “We knew that somewhere out there was the performer who could portray Monte Melkonian. We just could not find him.”

The team auditioned several actors without finding the right fit.

Then casting director Tatev Ketikyan sent Sargsyan a photograph of Vladimir Msryan.

Sargsyan said she did not initially know that the young actor was the grandson of celebrated Armenian actor Vladimir Msryan. She simply saw something in him.

Then came the audition.

“It took about three seconds for the entire team to approve him for the role,” she said.

The filmmakers could create the physical resemblance through makeup and costume. What convinced Sargsyan was something harder to manufacture: Msryan’s determination to understand the man he was being asked to portray.

“The enthusiasm and determination he had to portray Monte Melkonian were extraordinary,” she said.

The production had found its lead.

Behind the camera, Sargsyan turned to Suren Safaryan, who had served as second director on Vazgen. She said she had already decided during that production that Safaryan would direct her next film.

“There was no one I trusted more,” she said.

Safaryan worked with cinematographer Suren Tadevosyan and a crew that included many veterans of the earlier production. That familiarity would prove critical when Monte encountered its biggest crisis.

The cast was ready. The crew was assembled. Filming was about to begin.

Then, according to Sargsyan, Armenia’s Defense Ministry declined to provide support for the film’s battle scenes.

The decision came just days before shooting was scheduled to start.

“For a film like this, it was a catastrophe,” Sargsyan said.

Recreating combat on the scale required by the film involved logistical and safety challenges that a private production could not easily handle on its own. Sargsyan said the filmmakers had expected assistance from the ministry, including the presence of appropriate representatives while the battle sequences were being staged.

Instead, the production was left searching for another way forward.

“It was probably one of the most hopeless moments of my life,” she said.

The hardest part, Sargsyan recalled, was looking at a cast and crew prepared to begin work while knowing she might have to tell them the production could not proceed as planned.

She did not want to say it because she was not ready to accept it herself.

So the team kept working.

Props were built. Resources were found. People outside the production offered help.

Sargsyan becomes emotional when she remembers those who stepped in.

“There were patriotic people who extended a hand and helped us during that extremely difficult period,” she said.

Against the odds, the battle scenes were completed.

“Even now, people often ask me how we managed to film those battle scenes,” Sargsyan said. “I genuinely do not have a clear answer.”

Then she offered the simplest one.

“Somehow, we did it.”

Her disappointment over the Defense Ministry’s decision remains.

“This film is not about you. It is not about the person walking down the street,” she said. “This film is about Monte Melkonian. And I simply do not understand how anyone could treat a film about him that way.”

The Armenian Defense Ministry’s position was not included in Sargsyan’s account.

For Sargsyan, the experience reinforced something she had learned while making Vazgen: films of this scale depend as much on trust as they do on technical skill.

“Nothing can be accomplished without a team,” she said. “No film can be made without teamwork.”

Some people left the production before it was finished. Others stayed through the most difficult periods.

Sargsyan said that distinction mattered.

“Professionalism matters, but having good people beside you matters just as much,” she said.

She compared making a film of this scale to going into battle — not because of what appeared on screen, but because every day brought another problem to solve.

The film survived them.

Sargsyan also wants to dispel speculation surrounding the financing of Monte and Genetic Production’s other projects.

She said there are no outside sponsors and that the films were not commissioned by the Armenian government or another organization.

According to Sargsyan, she is personally financing Vazgen: The Last Sparapet, Monte and 10 additional films planned for the series.

“These films do not have sponsors,” she said. “They are not being made on anyone’s orders.”

She also said she does not view the project primarily as a commercial venture.

Her goal is to leave something behind.

“All of us will come and go,” Sargsyan said. “But these films will remain.”

She wants future generations to have a way to encounter the people who shaped Armenian history — not simply as names, monuments or passages in a history book, but as human beings whose lives can be seen and understood on screen.

For Monte, that process began with the person closest to his private life.

Years after Sargsyan first decided she wanted to tell Melkonian’s story, the project has survived the uncertainty over Seda Melkonian’s approval, the long search for its lead actor and a production crisis that threatened filming days before it was set to begin.

Now the film is finished.

Monte is scheduled to premiere Nov. 25, 2026. A Los Angeles premiere is expected to follow, with screenings also planned in Europe and other international locations.

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