A new film by Georgian director Rusudan Glurjidze was one of the winners at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czech Republic, after being selected from around 200 international works.
Glurjidze's debut feature film House of Others featured in the largest film festival in Central and Eastern Europe, which ran from July 1-9 in Karlovy Vary.
A co-production between Georgia, Russia, Spain and Croatia, the film was announced alongside other winners last weekend.
The Georgian director's feature claimed the top prize of the East of the West competition section at the festival, which featured 12 films from the Central and Eastern Europe, Balkan region, Turkey and countries of the former Soviet Union.
The section was one of three categories of the 51st Karlovy Vary film festival. Official Selection and Documentary sections were also in the program.
Award-winning Georgian director George Ovashvili (R) was one of the judges of this year's Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Photo from the Georgian National Film Centre.
Narrating a story of two families that survive the destructive Abkhazia war in the early 1990s, the film shows civilians on the winning side being haunted by memories as they are given houses cleared of their expelled owners.
The Karlovy Vary Film Festival's preview of the film praised it for its visual qualities that "hold their ground with those of [famed late Soviet director Andrei] Tarkovsky and [Russian filmmaker Andrey] Zvyagintsev, confirming the unprecedented rise of Georgian cinema."
House of Others features a cast of Georgian actors and was first presented as an unfinished project at the 2013 Sarajevo Film Festival’s Regional Forum in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Karlovy Vary festival also screened two other projects by Georgian filmmakers.
Davit Pirtskhalava's short film Father and documentary project Gogita's New Life by Levan Koghuashvili were shown within the Docu Talents from the East section.
This year's festival jury included award-winning Georgian filmmaker George Ovashvili, who sat on a five-person international panel.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival presents around 200 films from across the world every year while also staging events for cinema industry figures and experts.
Founded in 1946, the festival was granted the prestigious category A classification by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations a decade later.
See festival interviews with Georgian director Rusudan Glurjidze and other winners of the 2016 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival below: