Georgian Film 'link' Jun 2026

Irakli descended from the booth. He knelt beside the child and said, “Child, we are a film. A long, painful, beautiful one. And as long as one projector turns, we are not finished.”

The turn of the millennium brought stability and a new generation of directors. With the establishment of the Georgian National Film Center (GNFC) in 2001, funding mechanisms were modernized, and Georgian cinema began to re-enter the international stage.

Tonight, he was showing The Wishing Tree by Tengiz Abuladze. It was a pastoral poem of pre-Soviet Georgia—a village of wine, feasts, and fierce pride. Irakli loaded the reel with trembling hands. The generator outside coughed, and the screen flickered to life. georgian film

The "New Wave" of Georgian film is defined by a sharper focus on contemporary social issues, often exploring the friction between the old world and the new.

The history of Georgian cinema is one of the most storied and artistically significant in the world, once described by legendary director Federico Fellini as "a strange phenomenon—sophisticated, and at the same time, childishly pure". 🎬 A Century of Cinematic Legacy Irakli descended from the booth

That night, he walked home through shattered streets, past burned-out trolleybuses and darkened towers. But in his chest, the reel still spun. He was thinking of Nato’s eyes in The Eliso —silent, black-and-white, but more alive than any color.

Iosseliani left Georgia for France, but his early works remain classics. Falling Leaves (1966) is a tragicomic look at a wine factory worker who tries to be honest in a system of corrupt managers. Iosseliani’s use of sound—clanking bottles, dripping water, whispered gossip—creates a symphony of bureaucratic despair. His films feel like silent comedies trapped in a modern, miserable world. And as long as one projector turns, we are not finished

Brother of the famous director Giorgi Shengelaia, Eldar specialized in quirky, absurdist comedies. Blue Mountains (1983) is a brilliant satire of the film industry itself, following a writer trying to submit a script in a crumbling, bureaucratic film studio. The scene where a meeting is held to decide whether a falling chandelier is "realism" or "formalism" is pure comedic gold.

Tucked between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, Georgia is a small nation with a colossal cinematic footprint. For decades, scholars, critics, and directors—from Martin Scorsese to the French New Wave poets—have spoken of "Georgian film" with a reverence reserved for only the most distinct artistic movements.

A pivotal moment came in 2013 with (Grzeli nateli dgeebi), directed by Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß. Set in the early 90s, the film captured the loss of innocence during the civil war through the eyes of two teenage girls. It was a critical sensation, winning awards at Berlin and putting Georgian cinema back on the map for arthouse audiences worldwide.

In recent decades, a "New Wave" has emerged, dominated by a formidable generation of women filmmakers who are redefining the nation's cinematic landscape.