Filmmaker Maka Gogaladze's documentary Ever Since I Know Myself has earned the director the latest prize, after the European Women's Audiovisual Network picked the work for the Women's Talent Award at DOK Leipzig festival on Tuesday.
Used to select outstanding works in the CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator, a programme for women filmmakers looking to develop their projects and skills, the award went to the documentary after a jury team of Tamara Tatishvili, Brigid O'Shea, Vladan Petrović and Aleksandar Govedarica deliberated on works in the selection.
Ever Since I Know Myself [is] a project that combines the historical and the personal in a uniquely artistic way, focusing on the relation between its timely topics from a decidedly female perspective," a summary from the judges noted.
The documentary, which was a ZagrebDox Pro pitching session winner at the Croatian festival in the spring, takes a look at education received by children across Georgia in a bid to explore the identities the country is attempting to adopt for itself in the world.
✨ EWAnetwork's #Women'sTalentAward at @DOK_Leipzig (from #CircleWomenDocAccelerator) goes to EVER SINCE I KNOW MYSELF by #MakaGogaladze✨
— EWA (@ewawomen) October 28, 2020
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Georgians with a long Soviet past and strong traditional mindset try to adopt a new, European identity. I travel around the country meeting different children and observing the process of their education to explore who we are and how we want to be presented" - Maka Gogaladze
The filmmaker was one of 10 directors in the CIRCLE accelerator that hosted three online work sessions starting in June and awarded two scholarships to participants.
Gogaladze, who has previously worked in photography, became interested in documentary filmmaking and also had Ever Since I Know Myself selected for the 2019 Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries.
The director produces short documentaries for the South Caucasian media platform Chai Khana and teaches photography at the Media Lab of the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.