Georgian and foreign films follow each other at TIFF
By Salome Modebadze
Thursday, December 5
Paolo Sorerntino’s The Great Beauty followed by Svetlana Baskova’s For Marx, and Andrey Stempkovsky’s The Delivery Guy, opened the Forum of European Cinema (EF) section of the 14th Tbilisi International Film Festival (TIFF) by creating the odor of modern cinematography at Amirani and Rustaveli Theatres on December 3rd.
This day was full of screenings, as is the entire agenda of the festival. The three halls of Amirani cinema and one hall at Rustaveli cinema hosted films from various sections.
Disorder, a film by Georgian Director Archil Kavtaradze, took part in the International Competition. Every year this section has a special jury. Disorder will have to compete with Rufat Hasanov and Elvin Adigozel’s Chameleon (Azerbaijan/France/Russia), Maria Saakyan’s I’m Going to Change My Name (Armenia/Russia/Denmark/Germany), Maryna Gorbach and Mehmet Bahad?r Er’s Love Me (Turkey/Ukraine), Andrea Pallaoro’s Medeas (USA/Italy), Penny Panayotopoulou’s September (Greece/Germany), Ignas Jonynas’ The Gambler (Lithuania/Latvia), Yuri Bykov’s The Major (Russia), Erdem Tepegoz’s The Particle (Turkey), and Maria Sadowska’s Women’s Day (Poland).
The jury of the International Competition is headed by American Director Michael Hoffman. Other jury members are Iranian director, producer and screenwriter Samira Makhmalbaf, Polish film critic and producer Mateusz Werner, Georgian actor Giorgi Nakashidze and Hungarian architect and set designer Laszlo Rajk.
All the films of this section will be shown during the festival, while on the last day of the TIFF, there will be a special screening of the winning film.
Tuesday’s agenda also focused on a Polish-Georgian project called Tbilisi from Dawn till Dusk. This 40 minute documentary unites the short documentary films of the students of Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgian State University and the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management (GIPA) under the artistic supervision of Pawel Lozinski, Rafal Listopad and Wojciech Staron as a part of the documentary project The World from Dawn till Dusk by Miroslaw Dembinski and Maciej J. Drygas.
The organizers of the project said the students participating in this project are “the future of Georgian documentary films.”
Georgian Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines from the section Films Across Borders, was followed by a long Q&A session. One of the main characters, Giorgi Nakashidze, is a member of international jury.
