Tekla Machavariani

Holy Electricity

When young Gonga and his cousin Bart find a suitcase full of rusty crosses in a scrap yard, Bart gets the idea to turn them into neon crucifixes and sell them door-to-door to the gullible inhabitants of Tbilisi. Their crusade through the suburbs of the city becomes a quest for love and friendship.

Drawing Lots

The late Georgian writer, filmmaker and university professor, Zaza Khalvashi, delivers a quirky yet genuine tale of mundanity in this posthumously produced feature. Drawing Lots is a vignette of a seaside community where an apartment block and courtyard serve as an amphitheatre for the mysterious power dynamics that play out in the residents’ intertwined lives.

Heatwave

The story centers around the Georgian family while waiting for their terminally ill mother to pass away

Comets

Three decades after their separation, Irina and Nana remain mesmerized by memories of earlier days. But when Irina returns to the small community she left — where Nana stayed to start a traditional family — the women must reconcile with the past and their complex feelings.

Before Father Gets Back

In a darkened classroom, the white cracked walls serve as a movie screen. We are in a remote mountain village in Georgia. The light from the projector breaks the darkness: the children's first cinematic experience is about to begin. Among the kids are Iman and Eva, two Muslim girls, for whom the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to pick up a camera and start filming their daily lives. The girls are growing up in a valley infested by radicalism, where most people live in constant fear that their relatives will sacrifice their lives in the name of God.