Actor Merab Ninidze in competition for Cannes Festival award
Tweet 
Share
Georgian film actor Merab Ninidze will compete for top honours at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival after the feature drama Jupiter's Moon by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo was announced as part of the official selection of the event on Thursday.
Ninidze plays one of four principal roles in Mundruczo's 2017 work, with fellow actors Gyorgy Cserhalmi, Monika Balsai and Zsombor Jeger cast in the other roles.
The script for the feature follows a young immigrant who is shot and wounded during his attempt to illegally cross a state border. The incident leaves the man able to levitate at will, a skill that sees him get smuggled out of a refugee camp by an interested doctor.
A still from 'Jupiter's Moon'. Photo: Screen Daily.
Jupiter's Moon will be part of the official competition of the anniversary 70th edition of the prestigious French festival, alongside films including L'Amant Double by Francois Ozon and Loveless by Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Ninidze will be in contention for the Best Actor award at the festival which will run in Cannes from May 17-28.
The Georgian actor's film career includes an appearance in the Oscar-winning 2001 drama Nowhere in Africa following his move to residences in Vienna and Berlin in the mid-1990s.
The filming of the feature drama took place in Hungary's capital Budapest. Photo: Merab Ninidze actor Facebook page.
Born in 1965, Ninidze's first film role was in the internationally acclaimed Soviet-era Georgian production Repentance by director Tengiz Abuladze. The young actor played the role of a member of an authoritarian ruler's family in the 1984 drama.
Ninidze was also cast in a number of post-Soviet Georgian films before and after his move to Europe.
Kornel Mundruczo has been widely honoured by the Cannes festival juries for his past works. The filmmaker's 2008 feature Delta received the FIPRESCI Award, with his 2014 production White God singled out for the Un Certain Regard Prize in 2014.
Filmmaker Shorena Tevzadze’s documentary Didube, the Last Stop will bring the story of a shop keeper working at a bustling train station in Tbilisi to tens of thousands of viewers attending Visions du Reel film festival in Switzerland next week.
Six films by Georgian directors, ranging from 1930s Soviet classics to latest premieres, will be showcased at the 2017 edition of the goEast German festival focusing on cinema from the Central and Eastern Europe.
Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili’s new documentary Gogita’s New Life has received praise of film professionals at the Docudays UA festival after taking the Special Mention of the event on Thursday.
Georgian film professionals will hold industry meetings and seek to secure international cooperation for their projects at the anniversary Cannes Film Festival launching tomorrow.
Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa triumphed at the Batumi International Art-House Film Fest (BIAFF) on Georgia’s Black Sea coast by taking the Grand Prix of the event for his feature A Gentle Creature.
Popular Georgian actor Merab Ninidze is featured in the current season of award-winning American television series Homeland alongside the star cast of the long-running show.
Georgian actor Merab Ninidze will join Academy Award-nominated Benedict Cumberbatch, Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan and BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley in Dominic Cooke’s upcoming drama Ironbark.
Audiences visiting one of the leading short film festivals in Europe next month will learn about characters from two films by Georgian directors Vakhtang Jajanidze and Nino Shaburishvili.
Georgian film actor Merab Ninidze has been nominated in the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) for Best Supporting Actor in the film The Courier.
Young Georgian actors Elene Makharashvili and Nini Nebieridze are in shooting for Oscar-nominated director Phedon Papamichael's new thriller Light Falls, with the feature set to premiere next year.