Mari Gulbiani’s ‘Before Father Gets Back’ honoured as Best Documentary at Peruvian fest
Young friends Iman and Eva, growing up in a remote village in Pankisi Valley, are the focus of the documentary. Photo: filmpunkt.com.
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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.
After having its international debut at Britain’s Sheffield Doc/Fest Documentary Festival earlier this month and also screening at the Balkans’ leading Sarajevo Film Festival, the work was honoured at the South American event on Monday.
Gulbiani was represented in the Documentary Competition section along with award-winning filmmakers including Berlin International Film Festival-winning Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Rotterdam International Film Festival winner Anna Eborn and Sundance Film Festival nominee Tonislav Hristov.
The Georgian director’s documentary look at two young friends in Georgia’s north-eastern Pankisi Valley earned the award that comes in the wake of plaudits from the other festivals.
Before Father Gets Back follows Iman and Eva, Muslim girls growing up in the province under social hardship and often hit with religious turmoil.
In the background also complicated with regional political tensions, the two girls discover a local cinema screening as a window to freedom.
[For] Iman and Eva [...] the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives” - Sheffield Doc/Fest Documentary Festival.
Produced by Tekla Machavariani, the Georgian-French-German co-production is also described as a "film about friendship, longing and separation”.
The Al Este festival, based in Peru since 2008, places its focus on what it calls a “profitable cultural exchange with South America” for cinema from Europe’s ‘New East’.
Beside screenings, the event has also hosted sections for film professionals that have involved internationally acclaimed directors including Bela Tarr and Pawel Pawlikowski.
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.
Filmmaker Mari Gulbiani’s new feature Before Father Gets Back will premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, a leading Balkan cinema event, next month.
Filmmaker Tamta Gabrichidze has been unveiled among the prize-winners of Sundance Film Festival after her documentary The Trader claimed the Short Film Jury Award at the renowned event on Tuesday.
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.
Several Georgian films will be presented during the upcoming festival in Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 16 - 23 August. Georgian-Swedish feature ‘And Then We Danced’ directed by Levan Akin will be shown during the festival. The co-production premiered at Cannes festival earlier this spring and was received praised from the international media.
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.