Tbilisi-Tbilisi

A young filmmaker named Dato has no money to make a movie, so he hangs out drinking and brooding all day while his wife teaches music at a conservatory. He is also writing a screenplay. Excerpts from his script, shot in black-and-white, are cut into his story, each dramatizing the lives of people struggling to live in Tbilisi today. In the outdoor market for instance, Dato notices his old screenwriting teacher, an educated older man who is now reduced to selling margarine in a stand. As he ironically comments, professors are selling margarine while salesmen have become ministers. Everything is for sale, and culture has no value at all. – All the stories are skillfully interwoven so that, in the end, they become one long narrative about contemporary life in Georgia. (Deborah Young)