Award-winning Soviet Georgian classic 'Repentance' returns to Cannes Film Festival
Actor Avtandil Makharadze, who earned the Chigaco International Festival Award for Best Actor for his role in the film, will be in attendance at Cannes. Photo via IMDB.
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One of Soviet Georgian cinema's all-time classics is returning to France's major Cannes Film Festival next month, with a freshly restored and digitised version of Tengiz Abuladze's 1984 Repentance set to screen in the Cannes Classics section that presents preserved masterpieces to audiences of the festival.
The two-hour, 33-minute feature, which had its world premiere at Cannes in 1987 and earned three prizes including the Grand Prix of the Jury, will screen at the 74th edition of the celebrated festival in its online run over 11 days, starting on July 6.
It will be presented by the Georgian National Film Center, which led the restoration and digitisation of Abuladze's allegorical drama on political repressions and generational tragedy last year. The national cinema body, benefiting from financial support by the culture ministry, scanned the film rolls at the Universal Production Partners studio in Prague, before carrying out the rest of the work in Georgia.
???? The Festival de Cannes presents its 2021 #CannesClassics selection!
— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) June 23, 2021
As every year, it consists of the best restored prints and invites us to explore again the history of Cinema. #Cannes2021 #Cannes74
Here is the 2021 selection ► https://t.co/hXjgZXW5a1 pic.twitter.com/1sAUZteWEJ
The latter involved digital restoration as well as colour and sound correction of the original material at Studio Phonographe in Tbilisi, leading to the high-definition version fit for the Cannes section and the big screen.
Organisers of the French cinema celebration said actor Avtandil Makharadze and screenwriter Nana Janelidze would be in attendance at the screenings of the classic. The full Cannes Classics selection can be found on the official festival website.
Premiering at the Cannes festival in 1987, Repentance went on to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes a year later. The film also earned Makharadze the Best Actor Award - and received the Special Jury Award for the director - at the 1987 Chicago International Film Festival, and swept six prizes at the 1988 Nika Awards in Russia.
Newly restored Soviet-era Georgian classics have been returning to Cannes over the past few years, with Eldar Shengelaia and Tamaz Meliava's 1963 The White Caravan screening in 2019.
The GNFC has an ongoing project to bring original material of Soviet Georgian films to the country from their vaults at Moscow's grand Gosfilmofond archives in phases, and recently announced plans for exhibitions showcasing works from each decade of the past century in the coming years.
Soviet Georgian feature The White Caravan will return to the big screen at the Cannes Film Festival next month, 55 years after the film was first screened to audiences of the French cinema event.
Film professionals in Tbilisi have completed restoration of eight Georgian cinema classics from the 1920s, in the latest stage of returning the country's rich legacy from archives in Russia for preservation and showcase.
Four Soviet-era short films by Georgian directors will be on the big screen in Italy’s north starting this Saturday, as the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival brings classics by Otar Iosseliani, Goderdzi Chokheli, Sergei Parajanov and Bidzina Rachvelishvili to cinephiles.
Filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's award-winning feature debut Beginning is in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, published in place of the usual running of the festival, curtailed due to the pandemic this year.