Georgian Cinema Forum to screen award-winning features 'Beginning', 'Taming the Garden' at Bakuriani winter resort

Award-winning features Beginning and Taming the Garden by their respective directors Dea Kulumbegashvili and Salome Jashi will be among the latest Georgian films screened at the third Georgian Cinema Forum in the winter resort of Bakuriani starting this Friday.

The two features, awarded at international festivals and competitions over the last year, will be shown for the first time to a wider audience in Bakuriani, as part of the Forum's tradition of bringing contemporary films not yet found on a wider local big screen distribution.

The third edition of the event will have 17 films in store for audiences in total, with film critics, reporters, filmmakers, producers and actors expected in attendance, the Georgian National Film Center said.

Beside the screenings, talks around the national cinema scene will involve participants, as the Forum prepares for a five-day programme.

Beside the Cinéma du réel festival prize-winning Taming the Garden and San Sebastian Film Festival award recipient Beginning, the selection will also include director Keti Machavariani's Hot Docs festival prize-winning documentary Sunny and Alexandre Koberidze's What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, which earned the FIPRESCI international film critics association award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Other titles to go on screen at the Forum include filmmaker Maradia Tsaava's documentary Water Has No Borders, showcased at ParisDOC, an industry platform of the Cinéma du réel, earlier this year. Another documentary work, Dead Souls' Vacation by Keko Chelidze - premiered at the Hot Docs festival in Canada last year - is also in the programme.