★★☆☆☆
Russian director Maria Rigel’s latest film is a disappointingly slow-moving look at Armenian society that is more incomprehensible than enlightening.
Moscow-native Maria Rigel (who has previously been known as Mariya Batova) arrived in Armenia in 2022, following her country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Having first landed in a rural village outside Yerevan, she was inspired ‘by the local culture, people, and nature’ to create a feature film, noting in a 2025 interview with Klassiki that ‘from my first days in Armenia, I had the strange feeling that I had known this place for a long time. The psychology of local people also feels familiar since it’s part of the post-Soviet space’.
Ostensibly inspired by the legendary Caucasian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, as well as similarly famed Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov, Rigel attempts to create a distinguished drama examining gender roles and familial ties. Unfortunately, the film falls short of these aims, instead acting as an inscrutable example of art over substance.
Thus Spoke the Wind is segmented into three sections, each opening with a scene shot through the night-vision lens of a hunting rifle.
The first of these shots introduces Hayk (Albert Babajanyan), a quiet young boy who is bullied by his peers in an attempt to toughen him up into a real Armenian man. While perhaps not the happiest life, it seems he and his aunt Narine (Lusine Avanesyan), the manager of a local lavash factory, have carved out a space for themselves. Any sense of equilibrium is shaken, however, when Narine’s sister and Hayk’s real mother Anahit (Annika Abrahamyan) returns to the village
Arriving in the middle of the night with vibrant red hair, and having left her son years before, it is clear Anahit does not fit the stereotype of a traditional, good Armenian woman. Soon enough, the village begins to turn on her — the local boys, with Hayk in the backseat, chase Anahit down a country road; workers at the lavash factory, where Anahit now works, accuse her of stealing their belongings; a mother shame Narine for not stopping Anahit from having sexual relations with her son.
Things eventually reach a climax between the sisters, leading to an opaque ending hinting at violence and the secrets kept among family members. Yet no true conclusion ever comes.
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Indeed, much of what happens throughout the film is not visible to the audience, an apparent call back to one of Hayk’s first lines: ‘They say it can be invisible. Things that can’t be seen by human eyes’. Arguments happen off-screen, with only the sounds of smashing glass or insulting words thrown back and forth hinting at the possibility of violence. Characters jump from one location to another, time passing in waves with no clarity whether scenes are hours or days apart, each scene structured as a lingering tracking shot of a specific character.
Though the film’s runtime is only 90 minutes, these film-making choices create the feeling of a much longer work, one that drains the viewer rather than invigorates them.
Indeed, the most memorable and exciting aspect of Thus Spoke the Wind is the score by American composer Steve Brand. The haunting composition, featuring traditional Armenian wind instruments, lingers in the mind long after the film’s conclusion.
While touching upon a number of important aspects within Armenian society — from a woman’s right to her own sexuality and the effects of toxic masculinity — the film spends too much time avoiding any actual depth over surface-level examples, creating a piece muddled patchwork of a film that is more incomprehensible than enlightening.
Film details: Thus Spoke the Wind (2025), directed by Maria Rigel. The film is currently available to stream on Klassiki.
