Film Archive

Jahr

Land (Film Archive)

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
Filmstill Smoke of the Fire

Smoke of the Fire

O fumo do fogo
Daryna Mamaisur
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Ukraine,
Belgium,
Hungary
2023
22 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Learning a foreign language is like creating another self. How can you speak it without losing your own sound, without dissolving completely in it – and still be heard and noticed? This film is a charming and intellectually fastidious attempt to navigate the complexities of language, identity and trauma.

To do this, the filmmaker resorts to her own biography. Because Russia invaded Ukraine when Daryna Mamaisur, who comes from Kyiv, was in Portugal for a Doc Nomads graduate course. Home and the search for it became the defining factors of this work, as well as the traumatic situation of only being able to “witness” the difficult situation from a distance. She, the Ukrainian in Portugal, learns Portuguese. She lets the new words for “war,” “explosion” and “attack” roll off her tongue. She compares them with the soft, intimate sound of her native language, with the sound of Kyiv. Friends send audio and visual recordings from Ukraine which, combined with animations, become a multilayered essay and finally a testimony – for the resilience of language and culture, no matter where they are spoken and lived, and not least for the power of the artistic documentary, which can make speech and sound possible.

Victoria Leshchenko

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Daryna Mamaisur
Cinematographer
Shaheen Ahmed, Daryna Mamaisur, Svitlana Vostrikova
Editor
Daryna Mamaisur
Producer
Frederik Nicolai, Daryna Mamaisur
Sound
Ghada Fikri, Juliette Menthonnex, Tetiana Usova
Sound Design
Anna Khvyl
World Sales
Valentina Zalevska