Film Archive

Kids DOK 2023
Filmstill A Little Beetle Returns
A Little Beetle Returns
Elene Sebiskveradze
The little beetle tries unsuccessfully to get out of the sink. When the tap is opened, the watery whirlpool takes him into the wide world. The beginning of a wonderful journey.
Filmstill A Little Beetle Returns

A Little Beetle Returns

Patara xochos dabruneba
Elene Sebiskveradze
Kids DOK 2023
Animated Film
Georgia
2023
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
English

Again and again, the little coloured beetle tries to get out of the sink. The surface is so slippery! When he has almost made it, the tap is opened and the watery whirlpool carries him into the wide world. It’s quite perilous at first, but after a while it turns out to be only the beginning of a wonderful journey.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elene Sebiskveradze
Script
Elene Sebiskveradze
Cinematographer
Elene Sebiskveradze
Producer
Elene Sebiskveradze
Sound
TeTe Noise, Archil Khatchapuridze
Sound Design
TeTe Noise
Animation
Elene Sebiskveradze
Funder
Georgian National Film Center
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Abandoned Village

Mitovebuli sofeli
Mariam Kapanadze
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
Georgia
2020
14 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

At first there’s nothing but clouds. A cock crows, sheep bells ring, a herd of cows begins to move. The sounds seem to come from another age. When the morning mist clears, we recognize the outlines of an abandoned village. Decayed huts, broken fences, crooked roofs. The film looks like an oil painting, a still life painted in sometimes delicate, sometimes broad brushstrokes, bathed in different lights with the shifting times of day and changing its mood.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mariam Kapanadze
Editor
Elene Murjikneli
Producer
Mariam Kandelaki, Tsotne Kalandadze
Sound
Beso Kacharava
Animation
Elene Murjikneli
Creative Producer
Gela Kandelaki
Kids DOK 2022
Filmstill Franzy’s Soup-Kitchen
Franzy’s Soup-Kitchen
Ana Chubinidze
Franzy seasons her dishes with a special pink ingredient. When she searches for new supplies, she reaches a planet full of hungry creatures delighted with her culinary skills.
Filmstill Franzy’s Soup-Kitchen

Franzy’s Soup-Kitchen

La soupe de Franzy
Ana Chubinidze
Kids DOK 2022
Animated Film
France,
Georgia
2021
9 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Franzy is an extraterrestrial cook who lives alone and also feels a little lonely. She loves to season her dishes with a special pink ingredient that makes everything taste extra delicious. But when the spice tin is empty, Franzy must go in search of new supplies. She reaches a planet full of hungry creatures delighted with her culinary skills.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ana Chubinidze
Cinematographer
Sara Sponga
Editor
Antoine Rodet
Producer
Reginald de Guillebon
Co-Producer
Ana Chubinidze
Sound
Beso Kacharava, George Murgulia, Biko Gogaladze
Score
Erekle Gestadze, Zviad Mgebry
Animation
Chaitane Conversat, Lorelei Palies, Sophie Roze, Iulia Voitova
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Filmstill Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
Anna Dziapshipa
Abkhazia, a place of memory and at the same time a blind spot for the director. Almost impossible to enter from Georgia, she chooses an associative and personal approach to the split-off territory.
Filmstill Self-Portrait Along the Borderline

Self-Portrait Along the Borderline

Avtoportreti zghvarze
Anna Dziapshipa
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Georgia
2023
50 minutes
Georgian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Parts of the house director Anna Dziapshipa traces in her autobiographical roamings through the past look like straight out of a horror film: cobwebbed, dark, derelict. It is located in Abkhazia, the region officially off-limits to Georgians, protected by Russia and not recognised as an autonomous republic by the international community.

One half of Dziapshipa’s family comes from here, including a football player who once was a key player for Dinamo Tbilisi. The filmmaker edits footage of his sports activities into “Self-Portrait Along the Borderline,” but also shows the splendour of the former Soviet holiday paradise. It is a personal, associative approach in which Dziapshipa analyses and reflects on her own experiences as a child with both Georgian and Abkhazian family backgrounds. Discrimination plays a role, as do solemn and disturbing things. Time and again, spiders crawl through the frame, weaving their webs and thus connections.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Anna Dziapshipa
Cinematographer
Anna Dziapshipa
Editor
Eka Tsotsoria
Producer
Anna Dziapshipa
Co-Producer
Niko Mikadze
Sound
Anna Dziapshipa
Sound Design
Paata Godziashvili
Score
Nika Paniashvili
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
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Water Has No Borders

Tskals sazghvrebi ar akvs
Maradia Tsaava
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
France,
Georgia
2021
85 minutes
Georgian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s, the region of Abkhazia has been acting independently of Georgia. This has turned a massive dam into a border. But the hydroelectric power station also connects the two political entities: Because over a distance of fifteen kilometres the water flows freely, underground, from one side to the other. When a young journalist gets stranded here, stories of division emerge.

On the way back from a reportage trip to the dam, director Maradia and her cameraman’s car breaks down. Ika takes care of them. For decades, the joyous engineer has worked – in cooperation with his colleagues on the Abkhazian territory – on the maintenance of the plant. Maradia, representative of a whole generation of Georgians who know this place of longing on the Black Sea only from stories, becomes curious. But while the workers take the bus across the border every morning, the film crew is thwarted by bureaucracy. Time and again they are denied passage. This turns out to be fortunate for the film, because waiting for the permission, in the cafeteria of the dam, in drives around the river, the stories of people emerge whose lives are shaped by the secession. They talk of legal and clandestine border crossings, weddings and funerals and of life in the here and there.
Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Maradia Tsaava
Script
Maradia Tsaava
Cinematographer
Nik Voigt
Editor
Maradia Tsaava, Anne Jochum, Jérôme Huguenin-Virchaux
Producer
Mariam Chachia, Luciano Goor
Co-Producer
Edith Farine
Sound
Geoffroy Garing, Paata Godziashvili