 Armenia s leading living filmmaker, Harutyun Khachatryan, chose his nation s 19th century poet, Ashugh Jivani, as his new film s central spirit. This is hardly accidental, for nothing here is prosaic. Here is a dazzling, alternative vision of a cinema that is essentially poetic, metaphorical and allusive. A work of tactile sensuality, it nominally depicts the step-by-step creation of a monumental statue of the poet that ends up traveling on the back of a truck through the Armenian countryside. From this Khachatryan conjures a transcendental cinematic experience, employing a sublime fusion of sound, image and music to evoke the soul of the director s beloved country and its people.