Filmmaker Tinatin Kajrishvili awarded for ‘Horizon’ at US fest

Filmmaker Tinatin Kajrishvili’s new feature Horizon was unveiled among award-winners of an anniversary Santa Fe Independent Film Festival in New Mexico, the United States last weekend.

The drama, which screened at the Berlinale Film Festival earlier this year, took the Best Narrative Feature Award at the event called “a young Sundance” by IndieWire.

Its anniversary 10th edition presented prizes to 10 winners, including the Swedish-Georgian co-production.

Involving a cast of Georgian actors, its screenplay by Kajrishvili and David Chubinishvili follows Giorgi, a young man in isolated desperation following a breakup with his wife.

Retiring to a remote village, the protagonist finds himself among a small local community but cannot form connections through his ongoing anguish.

A routine marriage-breakdown story blossoms into something deeper, a timeless meditation on the destructive power of love and the hushed poetry of grief”, a review by The Hollywood Reporter said about the feature.

The drama received further plaudits from reviewers, with a Variety piece noting how “Kajrishvili once again proves herself a canny observer of intimate relationships and their fracture points”.

George Bochorishvili and Ia Sukhitashvili are cast as the principal characters of the screenplay. Photo: Gemini.

The same article also praised cinematography by Irakli Akhalkatsi, noting his “striking use of fire, ice, massive waves, and deep columns of snow” in scenes filmed at a remote location.

Horizon also screened within the main competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival this year.

Kajrishvili is known for the 2014 Berlinale-premiered Brides. Another of her features, Citizen Saint, is in production stage. It received a Eurimages Co-production Development Award and was selected for a collaboration programme at the Cannes Film Festival.

The anniversary Santa Fe Independent Film Festival ran this year between October 17-21.