Dirs: Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Prebel | Doc 101′
Violent death gives way to ethereal artistic expression in this new documentary that follows the plight of the Kartli people who hail from the eastern part of Georgia around the capital Tbilisi.
Formerly known as Hiberia, Kartli is considered the nation’s cultural heartland and played a crucial role in the ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages. Nowadays it is home to several UNESCO world heritage sites and the Algeti National Park.
A dreamy score and captivating images of a woman dancing, and cows grazing peacefully in a grassy pasture leaven the film’s more serious side that chronicles the region’s terrible past when hundreds of thousands of Georgians fled their homes in the disputed region of Abkhazia following the 1993 war.
With hardly any shelter available throughout the country, many sought refuge in vacant government buildings. One such place was the former Kartli sanatorium, named after Georgia’s famed historical kingdom. Several hundred families have made it their home, believing the stay would be temporary. Three decades later, they’re still living there, in increasingly wretched conditions:They reminisce over the past when everything was better – and cheaper. One woman remembers going to Russia to buy perfume. Back then she could afford to bring back several bottles as gifts, “Lancôme is the best”, she recalls ruefully.
In the vast and crumbling old building residents offer each other healing treatments and even tattoos. One man is busy nursing some little fledglings that have fallen out of their nests. Meanwhile the building is rapidly falling into disrepair, a crack widening to let in the twinkling lights of Tbilisi as hopes and dreams of the future seem unlikely to ever come true in the dilapidated ‘palace’.
Georgian filmmaker Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Prebel, who is French, incorporate interviews, family snapshots of birthdays and even wedding videos that now form the only semblance of happiness and dignity for these decent people who cling desperately to the fading possibility of returning to their own homes. Given the state of the building, a move is certainly on the cards, but not one that any of them looks forward to with relish. @Meredith Taylor
WORLD PREMIERE 20 NOVEMBER | IDFA DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 2025