Tbilisi Int'l Film Festival Announces best Georgian Films
The award ceremony of the 20th Tbilisi International Film Festival revealed its winners last night. The festival’s main award 'Golden Prometheus' went to films in the following categories:
- Best feature film - Dito Tsintsadze’s latest work Inhale-Exhale. With utter simplicity and a masterful touch, the Georgian director narrates the story of a woman who struggles to fit into society after a prison sentence.
- Best documentary - Mari Gulbiani’s Before Father Gets Back. The film tells the story of Eva and Iman, two Muslim girls for whom the experience of longing and separation becomes a turning point, inspiring them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives.
- Best short film- Giorgi Sikharulidze’s Fatherland. On the 63rd anniversary of Stalin's death, his worshipers gather in Gori to demand his canonisation as a saint, when something uncanny materializes.
Tbilisi International Film Festival brings great emphasis and awareness to the process and purpose of Georgian cinema. Every year the festival screens the latest Georgian films so as to pave the way for local, upcoming filmmakers to compete on the international stage.
Running between December 1-8, this year’s edition offered a selection of classic and new Georgian cinema along with the focus programme of British filmmakers and other global works.
The festival also hosted screenings of works by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, the recipient of three Cannes Film Festival awards, along with nominations for the European Film Awards and other highly esteemed honors.
EU Ambassador to Georgia, Carl Hartzell, awarded Uta Beraia's Negative Numbers the EU prize for being this year’s best film depicting human rights related issues.
Beria’s film is set in Georgia in the early years of the last decade, when economic standstill pushed the country’s youth into petty crime, many of them ending up in juvenile detention facilities.
By Elene Dzebisashvili