Director Giorgi Parkosadze earns DOK Leipzig Preview Award for first feature documentary project

Georgian filmmaker Giorgi Parkosadze has earned the DOK Leipzig Preview Award for his debut feature documentary project Requiem to the Hot Days of Summer at the CineLink Industry Days, an industry event of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The Georgian-Greek co-production, currently at the post-production stage, was part of the Docu Rough Cut Boutique platform at the event that concluded on Friday, with six projects pitched at its sessions. Five prizes were up for grabs for the selected submissions, including three money awards to contribute to their production.

The documentary project by Parkosadze, produced by Attic Production and Filmografik DocRepublic, earned the DOK Leipzig Preview Award, involving an invitation to present it at this year's DOK Leipzig festival in Germany.

In the documentary, the director follows a mother and her son in a remote Georgian countryside location, where their non-verbal communication and daily routine of farming, beekeeping and cheesemaking sets the atmosphere.

A still from the in-production documentary that takes a look at a mother and her son in a remote countryside location. Photo via Sarajevo Film Festival

[T]he audience is immersed in the non-verbal, contemplative relationship the two have, and through the camera’s gentle gaze, effortlessly enters into the rural reality as an inseparable part of their being

- CineLink Industry Days

The Sarajevo Film Festival industry platform has summarised the work as one embracing "sadness, silence and solitude, which follows every human being as the primordial seal of their fate". On his part, the director has explained his attraction to life in isolated locations - as opposed to the bustling reality of large cities - as the source of his interest in the subject matter.

Parkosadze said the work on the documentary, and living alongside the family captured on his lens, had "set me on a four-year-long mysterious journey, which made me integrate with their being and helped me find myself in the space that I longed for".

Tamta Tvalavadze and Angelos Tsaousis are working to produce the project, with edits by Fernando Restelli. While the producers are looking for sources to complete its financing, the documentary is slated for release at the end of this year.

This year's DOK Leipzig festival will run between October 17-23.