Amid ethnic violence, political corruption, and petty professional
intrigue, an artist tries to live free of lies.
Set during the last years of the Soviet Union, Stone
Dreams tells the story of Azerbaijani actor Sadai Sadygly, who lands
in a Baku hospital while trying to protect an elderly Armenian man from a gang
of young Azerbaijanis. Something of a modern-day Don Quixote, Sadai has long
battled the hatred and corruption he observes in contemporary Azerbaijani
society. Wandering in and out of consciousness, he revisits his hometown, the
ancient village of Aylis, where Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris once
lived peacefully together, and dreams of making a pilgrimage of atonement to
Armenia. Stone Dreams is a searing, painful meditation on
the ability of art and artists-of individual human beings-to make change in the
world.
