Discoveries from Georgia World Cinema

The man who loved literature

Tragicomic understanding of life, global irony about the total falsehood and general degradation of the communist society. The last days of the passing time.

A story about a father with mental problems and his 13-year-old daughter who live in a cabin in the woods. He is obsessed with completing his painting, which he thinks shall give him the key to the universe. She is trying to support him by pretending that she shares his enthusiasm…

“Raw City” is an observational documentary set in Gori, where many young people are forced to think about leaving. It explores migration as a real, everyday experience shaped by limited opportunities. Staying often means accepting restrictions, while leaving becomes the only way forward. The film follows artists, students, and young professionals through their daily lives, showing the quiet pressure behind this decision. Without narration, it relies on real moments and observation. At its center is Gori’s Art House, a fragile cultural space that still gives some a reason to stay. “Raw City” presents a city where the future of its young generation is slowly disappearing.

Laura, a single mother from Baghdati, transformed her home into a hotel and named it after her daughter, Viktoria. Faced with challenging social and economic conditions, Laura works day and night to provide for her family. She cleans houses with other women and assists an individual with disabilities. Caring and cheerful, Laura represents the countless working women in Georgia, whose labor is often invisible but is vital to their communities.

A chance encounter with a woman creating a seashell mosaic on the facade of a pharmacy in the coastal town of Ureki turned into a profound journey to the place of the artist’s strength and vulnerability.

Georgia in the 90s: Civil War. In the post-Soviet ruins, dangerous men with bags are looting. Oppression, hunger, lack of electricity, violence have become the usual state of people. Years later: the gray past has been replaced by a colorful present, but this is only formally. In reality, the violence index has not changed. The dangerous men with bags have not disappeared anywhere and continue to prey on defenseless people in a changed state.

Eighteenth century. Georgia weakened by external and internal wars. The main characters of the film sacrifice their lives to establish peace between separate corners, to fight for spirituality. They die, but their legacy - songs, wall paintings, cultural monuments - survive the ravages of time.

In Spring 2022 Masha prepares to leave Russia — her homeland that has changed. It turns into a chain of unexpected farewells: her mom dies of cancer, her lover flees army conscription, everything including her own old self is falling apart. Her way to cope with the grief is to fixate everything with her camera. Her anger guides her to inner emigration to the local underground scene, which became an escape for young russians. This kaleidoscope of shards chronicles not only spirit of the time, but the director’s personality crumbling against the backdrop of global turmoil.

1990s. A young man takes care of his bed-bound little brother. His monotonous everyday life is changed by a random girl with blue jeans.

The area of the abandoned parliament building in Kutaisi is an equal attraction and source of inspiration for artists and political elites of different eras. A young filmmaker studies the memory of this spot with his handheld camera, led by members of the band Skazz, and tries to reflect the facade of a building standing in the swamp.

Anna Dziapshipa was born of the union between an Abkhazian man and a Georgian woman. In Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, she skilfully weaves together unique archives and fragments to offer a personal and political biography of Georgia-Abkhazia relations. This vibrant exploration foregrounds a divided identity caught between the margins.

A short story from the life of a refugee family from Abkhazia.

This is a gentle and slightly absurdist documentary about the Ardoteli family in the mountains of Georgia who discovered that a Chechen helicopter carrying cheese had crashed by their house. Dropped into the life of this family, a helicopter is gradually enfolded into their daily rhythms, transformed into something utterly unexpected. In this land free of electric cables, cows find a shelter and children set up their private playground in it. Patient observations through the rusted “eyes” of this helicopter unfold a story of a remote place exposed to just one piece of civilization.

Since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s, the region of Abkhazia has been acting independently of Georgia. This has turned a massive dam into a border. But the hydroelectric power station also connects the two political entities: Because over a distance of fifteen kilometres the water flows freely, underground, from one side to the other. When a young journalist gets stranded here, stories of division emerge.

Georgia, a land known for its wine, is nowadays the third largest exporter of bitcoins in the world. A country that not long ago suffered daily power outages is engaged in a highly technological form of capitalism. What's more, much of this activity is concentrated in the rural, wine-growing region of Kakheti. In the countryside, cows graze amidst internet towers and are killed by machines; drones fly over vineyards; horse-drawn carriages travel on unpaved roads where electricity poles are being repaired and labour is performed by computers. The boundary between the natural and virtual is slowly being eradicated.

A metaphoric depiction of post-Soviet countries. The artificial environment of the USSR, built on an ideology that was not possible outside of theory has crumbled, but in its place the new cherished "freedom of democracy" remains merely the hollow words of concept. The film takes place in a vast building of a train station, resembling an aquarium. There the lost masses are ruled by chaos. The terror and misunderstandings of their country has been replaced by senseless and heartless bureaucracy. Having lost all hope, the travelers seek to abandon their country and find a new home, but the trains that come rushing through their station are not stopping. We meet people from all walks of life: a couple of lovers; a group of musicians; a priest; a thief; a banker carrying a briefcase of money; models walking idly on a podium; unhappy families; thieves, prostitutes. All seem trapped and cannot leave.

Zviad Tsetskhladze, a 20-year-old student, was an active member and one of the leaders of the youth protest movements. He was arrested during the 2024 protest demonstrations and charged with co-organizing group violence. The court sentenced him to 4.5 years in prison.

An adventure film about bullying, friendship, and trust.

Nico cannot get rid of his brother's attacks. His mother doesn't pay attention to this because she is more preoccupied with solving her own unhappiness. Niko commits a sin to help solve the problem.

After emigrating from Russia in 2022, a young woman lives through an ordinary day in Tbilisi. She works, moves through the city, and waits at a bus station for someone who never arrives. At a flower market, vendors arrange bouquets while a television plays the Soviet war film Farewell to the Boys. This quiet juxtaposition turns the everyday city into a space haunted by memory, grief, and distant conflict. Based on the director’s own experience, September is a poetic documentary about displacement, loss, and the fragile search for belonging.

A Ilia Doiashvili Cartoon

An body art performance that leads us to an extreme ritual in that is both horrifying and transformative

Any civil war destroys spirituality. It truly is a tragedy, especially for a small country like Georgia. This film-mystery shows the situation in Georgia from 1992 to 2003 and is made using the stream of consciousness technique.

The film tells the story of four different protagonists whose experiences ultimately merge into one narrative. Georgians who emigrated to France fight tirelessly for survival. One of the world’s most touristic cities becomes both a refuge and a last hope for many emigrants. The film uncovers corners of Paris that seem hidden within a city better known for its tourist attractions. Parallel Movements is a Georgia that exists beyond its borders. It resonates with the story of every Georgian who has already left, is leaving now, or will leave the country in the future.

A girl believes that by counting the stars the world will end. As she focuses her attention on the sky, she draws a strange pattern in the cycle of nature. Will her obsession become reality?

A documentary narrative mix of social picture. People in everyday life, political situations, fashion. Youngsters seeking for freedom while creating a renovating electronic music in Tbilisi city.

In the Georgian mountains, a family oversees a healing spring for the local village. When his sons leave home, the father entrusts the work to his daughter until something strange happens in this modern-day fable.

Grandmother while watching the performance, she first time gets into the dialogue with herself, before the moment she did not have time. After entering the dialogue with herself, it is a dangerous dialogue as psychologically it will form a some kind of a conflict. The conflict might expose outside or might stay inside in the interior. During the circus performance grandmother goes through the rite of passage.

The Christmas Holidays are over and people in town start to do fishing.

The difficult conditions of modern Georgia are explored through the eyes of young teenager working in an illegal distillery near Tbilisi.

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Video Art by Ana Chorgolashvili

The 3D animated documentary Kupalba tells the deeply moving story of a family torn apart by the Russian-Georgian war in Abkhazia. During the conflict, up to 300,000 people were displaced from their homes, forced to seek refuge in areas under Tbilisi's control. Director Vano Tvauri delivers a well-constructed and emotionally powerful narrative of war’s lasting impact.

After 20 years, by a strange twist of fate, the paths of Maro and Mitua, now Dimitri, cross again. Maro will try everything to get her Mitou back, but the past becomes impossible to get back.

Retraces the roots of the escapade of a group of Georgians in their twenties who hijacked an Aeroflot passenger plane on November 18, 1983 from Tbilisi.

The language of God can't be learned if you can't already speak it. Nor can it be recorded or reproduced. Despite this warning, Mithras, a sound engineer, heads out to a sacred reserve to spend a week trying to do just that. Armed with technical equipment, he disturbs a world of endless silence, a world permeated with mysticism and ritual. The seven days spent together with the community at the reserve, however, change not only Mithras but also those who speak the divine language

Single mom Anna is forced to take three, then four jobs to support herself and her austistic son who lives in a children’s home. When it all becomes too much to bear, she decides to leave Georgia and travel to the US. But getting tickets and a fake visa is easier said than done.

basti bought a new car and she’s showing it to her dear friend bubu.that’s when things get out of control

Injured and starving, Crow falls in the yard of the Church. He tries to get food in the Church, but believers kick the devil's bird out of God's house. The crow ends up on the shoulder of the scarecrow, but after the storm, the scarecrow is stripped from its clothes and believers discover the holy cross instead of it, and now the poor bird is kicked out from his new safe place as well...

Under the severe political regime a lead journalist is murdered, while the only private channel is literally bombed. In these circumstances a private political theater is opened, right in front of the government building.

Against the picturesque Ghanaian backdrop, Children of the Mountain is an honest exploration of a mother’s will in the face of much adversity. When her baby is born with a cleft lip, cerebral palsy, and Down syndrome, Essuman is led to believe that she has a ‘dirty womb.’ Her promising future as a wife and mother is shattered as her lover disowns her and the community eyes her with suspicion.

In a hauntingly beautiful town, permeated with the remains from the past, a young woman and her daughter arrive at night to meet the woman’s mother. A few days of their stay in a timeworn hotel are filled with a sense of anticipation, uncertainty and uneasiness, as they share intimate moments or find themselves in potentially dangerous situations. Tense meeting in the flooded room where the child sees her grandmother for the first time hints at the unhealed emotional wound from the past. Impossibility of their connection is reflected in the child’s gaze. Swimming in the pool seems to be the only thing the young woman shares with her mother.

Chachkhiani's film is centered around a generational relationship between Giorgi, a perpetrator of domestic abuse, and his mother. The latter finds herself in a position of having to make a decision of either covering for Giorgi after he abuses his wife, or siding with the survivor of the attack.

This is the story of how Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung helped a composer named Beobachter overcome a creative crisis.

Edge of the woods: as I drew near, / in the thick I spotted a deer, /I chased it, didn't stray, /stroked its back, it ran away.

After a long time, brother and sister meet each other and during a small trip they recall the reasons for their disagreement.