5 Dreamers and a Horse
ABOUT
Through four protagonists aspiring to fulfill their dreams, three contrasting visions of Armenia are sketched out. There’s the lift operator in a hospital, 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. 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.
Vahagn Khachatryan was born in Yerevan, in 1991. At the age of seventeen, he moved to China. From 2008-2014 he studied Filmmaking at the Beijing Film Academy, where he shot several documentaries and received the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship for Masters in Documentary. For the last ten years Vahagn Khachatryan has been working as a programmer at the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival. Between 2014 and 2016 he was part of the DOC Nomads, making documentaries in the three European countries part of the programme: These films were shown in several film festivals around the world. The Moon The Sun And The Musketeers was premiered at the Visions Du Réel in Switzerland and shown at film festivals such as DOK Leipzig, Taiwan IDFF, Moscow IFF, Cinemateca Uruguaya, San Francisco and 30 more International film festivals, winning several awards. 5 Dreamers and a horse" is his latest documentary.
Aren Malakyan was born in 1991 in Vanadzor, Armenia. In 2015 he graduated from the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography, Faculty of Feature Films. His graduation film Girl On The Moon (2014) received the prize of the President of Republic of Armenia in 2015, as well as several prizes at international film festivals,. Aren has directed the Mini-TV Series Special Department (2015) for the Armenian Public Television, and the short film Snow (2016) that had its international premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival. 5 Dreamers and a horse" is his latest documentary which premiered In Visions Du Reel Int. film festival and was chosen to present the festival in Doc Alliance award.
CREDITS
Aren Malakyan
Eva Blondiau