Georgia's Oscar bid 'Brighton 4th' to open Tbilisi Film Fest

Brighton 4th, Georgia's next Academy Award contender by director Levan Koguashvili, will open this year's Tbilisi International Film Festival, with the cinema celebrating bringing a range of general programmes in addition to focus sections on German film, famed director Agnes Varda, and more.

Koguashvili's award-winning feature, picked as the country's selection for the Best International Feature Film Award at the next Oscars ceremony, will mark the opening of cinema theatres for the 22nd festival edition next week, before a raft of sections takes over the programme.

While organisers have revealed three general programmes - for feature works, short and animation films, and documentaries - and the customary Georgian Panorama, they have also drawn up an even larger number of focus sections, retrospectives and special screenings.

'The Crusade' by Louis Garrel will close the festival's 2021 edition:

Over a dozen works, from Babi Yar. Context by the acclaimed Sergei Loznitsa to Bergman Island from Mia Hansen-Love, will highlight the European Forum, a section featuring other recognised names ranging from Louis Garrel (with The Crusade) to Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World).

• Find the full programme of the 22nd Tbilisi International Film Festival

Showcasing directors from across the pond, the Americas segment will have five features to offer visitors. Filmmakers Nathalie Alvarez Mesen (Clara Sola), Ivan Grbovic (Drunken Birds), Javier Andrade (Lo Invisible), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria) and Augustina San Martin (To Kill the Beast) are to have their works screened.

The legacy of acclaimed late French director Agnes Varda will be honoured in the Apollo: Memories of Cinema programme:

In a more country-specific selection, Made in Germany will show both works by directors from the country (Dominik Graf with Fabian - Going to the Dogs, Daniel Bruehl's Next Door and Sebastian Meise with his Great Freedom), and award-winning co-productions by Georgian filmmakers Salome Jashi (Beginning) and Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?).

Two themed sub-programmes - Horizons and Rebellion - have been compiled by organisers alongside those focusing on acclaimed French filmmaker Agnes Varda and her legacy (nine works from the director in the Apollo: Memories of Cinema programme) and the Georgian cinema of the 1920s and 1930s.

Finally, the 22nd edition programme is rounded off with the Special Screenings segment, where Dutch filmmaker Ineke Smits will be featured with her Abkhazia: Little Man, Time and the Troubadour, along with Dea Kulumbegashvili's Trieste Film Festival principal prize-winning Beginning, and Catwalk: From Glada Hudik to New York by Sweden's Johan Skog.

Set to run between December 5-12, the festival's screenings will be hosted at Amirani Cinema Theatre and screening halls of the National Archives of Georgia, and close with The Crusade by Louis Garrel.