Sarajevo fest to premiere Mari Gulbiani’s Pankisi Valley documentary to Balkan viewers
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Filmmaker Mari Gulbiani’s new feature Before Father Gets Back will premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, a leading Balkan cinema event, next month.
Following its screening at the Sheffield Doc/Fest Documentary Festival in the United Kingdom, the film will be on screens to the Bosnian fest boasting "a paying audience of over 100,000”.
The Georgian-French-German co-production focuses on two girls in Georgia’s north-eastern Pankisi Valley.
See a trailer for Gulbiani's documentary below:
Iman and Eva, two Muslim friends, discover the inspiring power of cinema in their village, part of the troubled region with political and social tension for decades.
[For the protagonists] the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives”, said the Sheffield Doc/Fest summary for the feature.
Produced by Tekla Machavariani, it is also described as a "film about friendship, longing and separation” with its focus on family members leaving the Georgian vallery to join the Islamic State in the Middle East.
The Sarajevo Film Festival’s documentary competition program will include other works by directors from across Europe.
The festival is scheduled to run between August 10-17.
The latest work by film director Rati Tsiteladze has received dual recognition by European cinema experts after Prisoner of Society was named Best Documentary of the Tampere Film Festival and nominated for a European Film Academy prize last weekend.
Films by Georgian filmmakers will be screened in three different programs of next month’s Sarajevo Film Festival, while other directors and young talent from the country will also also be represented in sections of the leading Balkan cinema event.
A premiere of famed director Dziga Vertov’s newly discovered century-old film, a Sundance-winning work from North Macedonia and focus on filmmakers from Hungary will make this year’s CineDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival a major cinema celebration in the capital starting next week.
Beniamino Barrese’s Sundance-nominated The Disappearance of My Mother took the principal award of the CineDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival, which closed in Tbilisi this week.
Georgian filmmaker Mari Gulbiani’s feature Before Father Gets Back has collected the Best Documentary Award at the Festival de cine Al Este, an annual event in Peru focusing on cinema from Central and Eastern Europe.
Young students in primary schools of villages near Georgia's occupied territories and in highland locations will learn the mastery of filmmaking and try their hand at creating short works in a summer project launched on Monday.
Britain’s Sheffield Doc/Fest Documentary Festival will host the world premiere of director Mari Gulbiani’s feature Before Father Gets Back starting this week.
Cinema professionals are in the central Georgian villages and towns adjacent to the occupation line, to screen films and talk the art form with kids studying in local schools.
Georgian film director Elene Naveriani has claimed honours of the jury of the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival for her debut feature I Am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth.
A new project involving a Georgian immigrant community in Germany and a foundation for development of Georgia's eastern Kakheti province is offering women of the remote Pankisi Valley communities economic opportunity through creative work.