Georgian cinema, film professionals to be represented at Sarajevo fest

Films by Georgian filmmakers will be screened in three different programs of next month’s Sarajevo Film Festival, while other directors and young talent from the country will also also be represented in sections of the leading Balkan cinema event.

In the festival’s principal competition, as well as documentary and student film programs, works by Georgian creatives will run as the event hosts visitors between August 10-17.

Leading the representation, Tinatin Kajrishvili’s Horizon will be introduced to the audiences in the main competition.

The Berlinale-premiered feature has been summarised by the German festival as "a meticulously and consistently told story about the end of a relationship”.

It follows a man following a major change in his life, switching a middle-class urban existence for isolation on a barren island.

In another aspect of Georgian representation at the event, the jury for the feature competition will involve Ana Urushadze, winner of last year’s Cineuropa prize at the Sarajevo fest.

Among documentaries to be screened to viewers in Sarajevo will be Before Father Gets Back by Mari Gulbiani, a co-production between Georgia, French and Germany.

It follows two girls in Georgia’s tumultuous Pankisi Valley, with the young friends discovering the inspiring power of cinema at a screening in their village.

Mari Gulbiani’s documentary follows Iman and Eva, two young friends in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley. Photo: Sheffield Doc/Fest.

[For the protagonists] the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives”, said a summary for the documentary by the United Kingdom’s Sheffield Doc/Fest.

The third film by a Georgian filmmaker to be selected for the Sarajevo event is Apollo Javakheti by Bakar Cherkezishvili, a 2018 short about a young protagonist growing up in remote countryside but dreaming of travelling to the moon.

Cherkezishvili’s work will be part of this year’s Student Film program of the festival, designed to support emerging professionals creating films as part of their studying process.

The leading Balkan cinema event will also involve Georgian producer Ani Kashia in Talents Sarajevo, a platform involving master classes, workshops and other activities for new filmmakers.