Chiatura once set the pulse of the times. With the biggest manganese mine in the world, the city was a motor of the Soviet heavy industry. When Rati Oneli arrives, those days are over. Few things are moving, except for his camera which moves to capture a wide screen shot. Or perhaps there are: the minds and bodies of a music teacher, a miner and two young female athletes who persevere in what has become a ghost town. Oneli combines their portraits in a thrilling atmospheric tale that invokes the Georgian national epic and is enriched by suggestive music, giving a narrative form to his long film debut that at least gets the documentary elements flowing.

Zaza Rusadze