This documentary offers a play-by-play account of nonviolent protests that shook up politics in Armenia in 2018.
In 2018, the president of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, facing term limits, sought to stay in power by having members of his party in the country’s parliament elect him as the prime minister; a constitutional referendum in 2015 had transferred most of the president’s powers to that position. Critics of the right-wing Sargsyan saw that as an autocratic move. In protest, Nikol Pashinyan — a Parliament member and former political prisoner and newspaper editor — started what became a nationwide movement.
The documentary “I Am Not Alone,” directed by Garin Hovannisian, offers an account of how, in less than a month, Pashinyan’s efforts to prevent Sargsyan from hanging on grew from a march to a nonviolent revolution. (Hovannisian, in a relationship not made clear in the film, is a son of Raffi K. Hovannisian, who challenged Sargsyan for the presidency in 2013.)
The movie interweaves footage of the protests — some professionally shot, some drawn from makeshift sources — with post-mortem interviews. It shouldn’t be a spoiler to say how things turned out, or who is currently Armenia’s prime minister. But because the film includes retrospective interviews with both Pashinyan and Sargsyan, it courts a sense of mystery about which one succeeded.
The talking heads, who discuss events in the past tense, sap the protest material’s momentum, and a score by Serj Tankian (who appears as a commentator) is unnecessarily manipulative. It’s also difficult to watch the parts concerning one of Pashinyan’s early gambits — he wanted protesters to stop the parliamentary session during which Sargsyan’s election as prime minister would occur — without thinking of the Capitol riot in the United States, no matter how much the circumstances differed.
I Am Not Alone
Not rated. In English and Armenian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. On virtual cinemas.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
