"Little Mher", an 80-minute animated feature based on "Daredevils of Sassoun", Armenia's national epic, premiered in Yerevan on 31 May and has been showing in cinemas around Armenia, with versions in several languages planned for abroad. Its makers call it one of the first projects of its kind in the region. AI generated the images and the movement, while people wrote the script and handled the voices, music and direction.
Mher is the central figure of the epic's fourth branch. His father, David of Sassoun, is the last of the heroic Sassoun line and looms large in Armenian folk memory. In the legend, Mher shuts himself inside the Cave of Ravenstone until justice returns to the world. The film does not retell that. It imagines him walking out into present-day Armenia instead, which director and producer Hovhannes Margaryan said was more interesting than taking the audience back into the epic.
Margaryan said AI was used only to generate images and create motion, and insisted the film was not automated: actors, musicians, writers, artists, cinematographers and AI specialists shaped it together. The hardest part was matching generated faces to Armenian speech, because most systems learn mainly from English and other large languages. The actors helped, and some lines were rewritten to fit the animation. Early images looked more like Greece or Italy, so the team spent months collecting photos of Armenian villages, courtyards, tuff stone and monuments to steer the models. They also worked with ethnographer and designer Vahe Kotanyan on details down to Mher's arm guards and cloak.
Khoren Levonyan narrates, with Sos Janibekyan, Levon Harutyunyan, Arus Tigranyan and others voicing characters, several of them in animation for the first time. Harutyunyan hopes it will bring young people back to an epic that has faded for them. Tigranyan said her first thought was of her daughter hearing her voice in an Armenian cartoon. Other cast members saw it as a way to give children Armenian stories in a form they enjoy. The makers say it is aimed mainly at children but written for teenagers and adults too, with humour and adventure on top and deeper meanings underneath.
The 485 Center for Generative Technologies, which aims to join Armenian identity with new technology, produced the film, The Armenian Weekly reported. Its creators say AI cut the time and cost considerably, but that it gives creative teams new options rather than replacing them.
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