The Axe

Based on Hovhannes Tumanyan's fairy tale «Brother Axe», Robert Sahakyants's animated parable follows a village whose people have never seen an axe until a passing woodcutter takes pity on them and gives them his tool. Not knowing how to use it, the villagers start maiming one another, and their attempts to get rid of the axe — first in a fire, then in a straw-lined dungeon — end with the whole village burning down. Yet when the fire dies out, the inhabitants rejoice in the warmth of the ashes.