Tbilisi Film Fest to screen 10 debut works in main competition

The principal section of this year's Tbilisi International Film Festival will present 10 debut works including Ana Urushadze's award-winning feature Scary Mother, Jens Assur's drama Ravens and Visa Koiso-Kanttila's work Star Boys.

Marking the 18th edition of the festival starting December 4 in Tbilisi, organisers have revealed the Main Competition Section as well as a program for German cinema marking an anniversary.

The principal section will screen 10 debuting works by filmmakers from Europe and Middle East, with a focus on formative life experiences.

Although the heroes of the film stories [in the program] live in different realities, they have very much in common. Looking for one's self and identity are surely the eternal issues[...]", said hosts of the week-long festival.

Beside Urushadze's widely acclaimed feature the Georgian line-up for the festival is also bolstered by George Ovashvili's latest drama Khibula and Zaza Khalvashi's Georgian-Lithuanian co-production Namme, along with other films.

Celebrating 25 years of diplomatic relations between Georgia and Germany, "eight of the German cinema's best works" will be screened in the section Apollo — Memory of the Cinema.

The retrospective will include Heiner Carow's 1989 work Coming Out, the first film made officially in East Germany that concerned homosexuality. Its screening will see actor Matthias Freihof, who played a principal protagonist in the work, in the audience in Tbilisi.

Actor Nastassja Kinski in Wim Wenders' 1984 film 'Paris, Texas'. Photo: Tbilisi International Film Festival.

Internationally celebrated director Wim Wenders' 1984 work Paris, Texas will also be presented as part of the German cinema program.

Wenders received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for The Best Director as well as the principal award of the Cannes Film Festival for the drama.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Georgian filmmaker Merab Kokochashvili's acclaimed 1967 film Big Green Valley, the feature will be screened to the audience in Georgia's capital.

The director himself will be bestowed with the Honorary Prometheus Prize of the festival, designed to recognise significant contribution to cinema art.

A still from Merab Kokochashvili's 1967 work 'Big Green Valley'. Photo: Tbilisi International Film Festival.

Named as the Best Georgian Film by local critics in 2006, the work follows experience of shepherd Sosana in Soviet Georgia's countryside, as the natural surroundings are being suddenly transformed for industrial works.

The film was restored and digitised by the German-based Institute Arsenal for Film and Video Art along with two other Georgian works. Kokochashvili's creation will be screened at the festival in a new format.

Aside from screenings the 18th edition of the festival will also involve workshops on animation and pitching as well as a session for actors.

This year's Tbilisi International Film Festival will run through December 10.