Alexander Kvatashidze’s documentary wins principal prize of Balkan fest

Filmmaker Alexander Kvatashidze’s documentary portrayal of war reporters and youthful idealism has won one of the major awards of the Pristina International Festival, the principal cinema event of Kosovo.

See You in Chechnya, the Georgian director’s 2016 work, was announced among winners the ninth edition of the event on Thursday.

Kvatashidze’s homage to journalists travelling to some of world’s most hazardous regions embroiled in conflict received the Best Documentary Film Award of the festival also known as PriFest.

In his film, the director narrates both his own story of following his affection for a foreign photographer to travel to the 1990s war-ridden Chechnya, and those of photojournalists placing their life in danger in the conflict for widely varying reasons.

Kvatashidze meets reporters he met during the war and interviews them a decade later to find out about the traces the brutal conflict left on them.

My trip to Chechnya brought me into contact with war reporters: an exceptional tribe of courageous idealists, hardcore conflict veterans and eccentric adventurers who risk their lives [...] to report the truth”

Throughout thirteen years of timeline we follow the stories of their ambitious projects and professional success. But there are consequences too: kidnapping, murder and suicide”, the filmmaker said about his documentary.

The festival celebrated its ninth edition with over a dozen awards. Photo: PriFest.

See You in Chechnya marked its regional premiere as it screened within the Pristina festival.

It was previously presented to audiences of the Docudays UA festival in Kiev, following its production stage which saw the documentary receive the HBO Europe prize of the When East Meets West co-production forum.

The work was also awarded the Open Doors Production and the ARTE Open Doors production awards at the 2013 Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland.

See You in Chechnya is a co-production between Germany, Georgia, Estonia and France.

Born in Tbilisi, Alexander Kvatashidze studied at the film department of the California State University in San Jose.

In 2007 he founded the Monitor Studio, an award-winning project producing investigative programs on social, economic and political issues in Georgia.