Dir: Tato kotatishvilli | Georgia, Netherlands · 2024 · DCP 2K · Color · 95′ · o.v. Georgian
After a family funeral young Gonga and his cousin Bart, a sort of Georgian Laurel and Hardy combo, find a suitcase full of rusty crosses in a scrapyard, Bart gets the idea to turn them into neon crucifixes and sell them door-to-door to the gullible inhabitants of Tbilisi.
After spraying the crossed they spend the night in their van only to be woken the next morning by a Roma coffee seller and enjoy a breakfast of fruit and bread. Passers by then offer them marketing tips to sell their wares
Following a chronicle three act progression the two finally manage to make abit of money and toast their friends to a long life with “plenty of eating drinking and fucking” until Bart makes a fatal mistake that provides the piece with a minor dramatic twist.
In their eventful crusade through the suburbs of the city the director captures the essence of his hometown Tbilisi through a series of moving tableaux. Holy Electricity is as much a travelogue as a demonstration of how Georgians forge love and friendship through this story of Gonga and Bart. Listening to Tbilisi’s music, absorbing its colours and textures, feeling its mood and capturing the zeitgeist.
We meet the famous stray dogs their ears tagged to demonstrate their vaccinated status and fed by passers-by, and a community of cats, a beggar singing got his supper reveals the poignancy of a nation where the poor are really pool (not just professionals out to make a buck).
Hospitals work well here too even for the animals – both Gonga and a pet dog find themselves bandaged up after minor broken bones. We hear the famous male singers joining together over a meal of Georgian cuisine including the famous khachapuri we experience the vastness of the capital nestling in a bowl in the surrounding countryside. But the overall impression is if calm and tolerance. Tato says his chilled narrative with documentary elements manages ‘To embrace my fellow citizens and accept them as they are: crazy, lovely, eccentric to outsiders eyes. ©️MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | Golden Leopard | CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE 2024