Return of the Poet (2005)

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.