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Doc Alliance Award 2022
Filmstill 5 Dreamers and a Horse
5 Dreamers and a Horse
Vahagn Khachatryan, Aren Malakyan
Four people embody the contrasting faces of Armenia today. However different their dreams may be, they are all about freedom and self-determination.
Filmstill 5 Dreamers and a Horse

5 Dreamers and a Horse

5 yerazoghnery yev dzin
Vahagn Khachatryan, Aren Malakyan
Doc Alliance Award 2022
Documentary Film
Armenia,
Germany
2022
82 minutes
Armenian
Subtitles: 
English

The four people introduced by Aren Malakyan and Vahagn Khachatryan in their debut feature-length film embody the contrasting faces of Armenia today. Some of them are making plans for the future that might even be realised, others strive for seemingly unattainable ideals. What unites them all is the dream of a self-determined life – a near-impossibility in a country where the government tries to control everything and everyone.

Melania, in her mid-sixties, works as a lift operator in a Yerevan hospital and longs for a late career as a cosmonaut. In a way, she seems to be an anachronistic remnant of the Soviet age. The deep country, still ruled by ancient traditions and ideas of happiness, is represented by the farmer Karen, who is looking for the best of all possible wives. And Amasia and Sona own the night over the roofs of the capital. They are part of a new generation ready to fight for a future in which some liberties can be obtained despite a suffocating patriarchy. Occasionally amused, but never judgmental, the two filmmakers watch their native country dream.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Vahagn Khachatryan, Aren Malakyan
Cinematographer
Vahagn Khachatryan, Aren Malakyan, Andranik Sahakyan
Editor
Federico Delpero Bejar
Producer
Vahagn Khachatryan
Co-Producer
Eva Blondiau
Sound
Jonathan Darch
Score
Avet Terteryan, Rafael Tunyan
Filmstill Beauty and the Lawyer

Beauty and the Lawyer

Beauty and the Lawyer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Armenia,
France
2023
105 minutes
Armenian
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

The film opens with the wedding of Garik and Hasmik and ends with a decorated tree for their son’s first Christmas in the new house that his father built himself. Between these fixed points of middle-class family life, nothing is as heteronormative as this bracket and above all the political and religious mainstream in Armenia would lead one to expect.

Hasmik is a lawyer who fights for LGBTQIA+ rights, her husband appears in the media as drag performer Carabina, does sex work and makes his life in a queer-phobic environment the subject of an autobiographical theatre performance. The film, which evolved out of close friendship and is always one step behind the wild energy of Garik/Carabina, takes a precarious, raw, but also utopian-tinted look at current social struggles. The longing for normality, emancipation and responsibility find themselves exposed – sometimes powerless and unprotected – to violent defamation. TV images show the zeal behind the attempted construction of homosexual and trans persons as “Un-Armenian.” Meanwhile Carabina, in a moment of rest from plastering the house, trowel in hand, plays a song by Charles Aznavour, whose family came from Armenia – “What Makes a Man?”

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Cinematographer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Editor
Wei-Yuan Song
Producer
Jean-Marie Gigon
Co-Producer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Sound Design
Thomas Fourel
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Hasmik Petrosyan, Garik Amolikyan
Winner of: Silver Dove Feature-Length Film (International Competition Documentary Film)