Five Dreamers and a Horse

Production year: 2022
Country: Armenia
Directors: Vahagn Khachatryan & Aren Malakyan
Producers: Eva Blondiau & Vahagn Khachatryan

Through four protagonists aspiring to fulfil their dreams, three contrasting visions of Armenia are sketched out: there is the lift operator in a hospital, a kind of remnant of urban Sovietism, who wants to travel into space; the farmer in search of a perfect wife, revealing a rural social structure that is still dominated by the patriarchy; and finally, the young feminist and queer girls, who simply want to live their lives, enamoured with emancipation and symbolising the infiltration of Western societal changes, which are also bitterly contested on this side of the Ararat. The filmmakers observe without judgment, with precise framing at times revealing a certain amusement. Together they have made an elegant and visionary first feature-length film, conveying the mutation of a country and, implicitly, the questions faced by generations of young adults caught between their desire for change and their dreams of revolution. Five Dreamers and a Horse finishes on scenes of a beginning conflict and the worrying and ambiguous image of a crowd gathered on a public square… What does the fifth dreamer want?