Derenik Demirchyan’s “Badal’s Heart” is a moving and symbolic story about the awakening of human dignity in a simple Armenian villager. Set in the 1930s, during the adoption of the new Soviet Constitution, it follows Badal, an elderly shepherd who spent his life as a servant under feudal oppression. Hearing about the new laws that grant equal rights and voting power to all citizens, he experiences a profound spiritual rebirth — realizing for the first time that he, too, is a free and equal human being. The story is both poetic and philosophical, illustrating how freedom begins not in laws, but in the human heart.