Zurab Iobashvili's short documentary film, "Where the Moon Rises" (2021) is a form of documentary television portrait and reportage, in which the main hero is not only an action figure, but also a narrator. Television film has a great role in the history of Georgian cinema. Even now, offering new material to the audience often occurs according to these traditions, although the film, which should create a portrait, faces many challenges, providing Georgian documentary cinema technically and...

KIND, RESTLESS THOUGHT IN A DOCUMENTARY PORTRAIT Read More

No matter how many conditions of dramatic unexpectedness there are, no matter how many times we try to introduce an incredible twist in the usual, narrative rhythm of cinema, it will still be a reaction every time, depending on the meaning of the content of what happened, and not just a desire to ask the question "What happened?"... However, this question is the very first thing that embodies the reaction of the audience who is surprised and traumatized with unexpectedness. "10:45" (2021) – this is the title of Giorgi ...

A VIEW OF THE UNEXPECTED ENDING Read More

Documentary film directors and their interest are surely attracted to numerous disasters and misfortunes, uninvestigated cases that remained an unrecognized event. Quest for truth requires a completely different documentary style and narrative form and a film about an unknown disaster aims at seeing the result of imagination and reality. TV and movie viewers have become accustomed to the...

FEAR TRANSFORMED INTO A LIVING CHARACTER Read More

The goodness of Georgian documentary cinema and the deep vision of things and everything existing today are probably as much needed for modernity as hope. The hope not for a better future, but the fact that real life is born and grows only in the smallest, sincere seed of a dream. Still under the conditions of Soviet ideology, Georgian documentary cinema covered various, unexpected areas of search and discovery, which determined its diverse topics. This legacy dictates a certain tradition with the works of Merab Kokochashvili, Guram Pataraia, Gela Kandelaki, Gogi...

POISINED WITH ETERNITY Read More

The documentary film made by Tinatin and Khvicha Emiridze, "Respublika" was shot in 2021, when the world was in complete pandemic lockdown and waiting for new cataclysms... However, as always, and not only then, waiting for a disaster is a usual thing, for a usual over-burdened environment. And yet, the main character of "Respublika" is an unusually thoughtful son of ...

THE STORY OF A GOOD MAN'S GOOD NATURE Read More

"Mziuri" (“sunny”), which creates an association of Georgia's Soviet past and, at the same time, a stable existence stemming from this past, is the title of Ketevan Machavariani's documentary film (2020) as well as the name of its main character. There is nothing special about this door-to-door practice, with which the character, Mziuri Gogichaishvili, like her colleagues, struggles every day. It is worth noting that the film won several prizes and the main idea ...

MZIURI FROM GEORGIA Read More

In all the annotations of Giorgi Mrevlishvili's documentary film, "Twelve Lessons" (2019), we come across the statement that "the film tells grandpa Valeri’s story, who lives in Guria and uses various ways to integrate his autistic grandson into society..." etc. Each time we watch the world built by Valery Kotrikadze's love and labor on a documentary screen or in a TV story, we still get the feeling that this world might ...

LESSONS OF PLACIDITY - HOW TO GAZE THE MORNING... Read More

Georgia of 1980s and 1990s gave birth to many interesting and, at the same time, such fates in the generation of "underground" musicians and artists, which caused a fearful thought even when looking towards the future. The main character of Keko Chelidze's film "Dead Souls’ Vacation" (2020), musician Levan Svanidze is one of those who found illusory peace in time and emptiness. The interest in the 45-year-old musician, who is actually unemployed...

ANNOTATION OF ONE DESTINY OF MANY SOULS Read More