The coronavirus pandemic has inspired great fear around the world and, in response, people have fled cities for their native lands in the rural communities.  Gvantsa Tamarashvili, 44, is one of the many who turned to farming as Covid-19 obviated her normal life. A music teacher for many years, she decided to return to her ancestors’ land in southeastern Georgia, in the village of Teleti. The area had once been famous for its almond trees,  corny, and barley fields. A long abandoned house became her shelter and her new life brought new challenges.  A return to the almond groves is a moment from the life of an enthusiastic woman, one who is full of hopes and tries to completely change her life,  with the help of newly planted almond trees. 

Drama is a fact of life in Mariam Dolidze’s life - and not only on stage.

The 30-year-old Georgian actress is an activist in the social movement “Russia Is An Occupier” which protests Russian support for Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In the early 1990s, conflicts between newly independent Georgia and the two regions led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Georgians, who were driven out of their homes and still live in displacement. Those who managed to return to South Ossetia lost their homes a second time after the renewed conflict in August 2008.

Over the past decade, the people living along the administrative border line, as the de-facto border is called, are engaged in a daily struggle to make a living.

During the day Dolidze and her fellow activists organize demonstrations, visit the communities, especially the elderly, and bring donations and emotional support. In the evening, she wears her acting hat and performs on stage. Her latest work is a character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler.” The novel matches her life fully as one of the movement’s initiatives is to disseminate material, often at night, denouncing Russia as occupier of a part of their country.

My grandparent’s house, where I used to spend my summer holidays,  always seemed scary to me. When I recall my childhood, I remember feeling fear and loneliness, mixed with a sense of mysticism. There was a time when I perceived objects as living things. I also imagined that my childhood home was very far from the rest of the world, standing alone in the backwoods. 

This film is a portrait of a New Year's Eve, when nothing is fabulous and magical. A confused Santa loiters as hundreds of police walk up and down streets bedecked with lights and decorations for the holiday.

City life features its own, personal music. The rattle of trains, the squealing of old taxis, and the vibration of buses create an urban tune which sets a rhythm that  surrounds us. This music has long inspired musicians, in different times and different places. Starting from the 1920s, musicians created melodies based on the noise of ships, trains, cars, and helicopters. Music evolved to blend classical instruments with the sounds produced by objects around us. “The Music of Transport” is an experiment where Georgian musician Nick Machaidze mixes urban sounds with words. Machaidze is one of the first musicians in Georgia who used the mechanism of transport means to create musical tunes.  

A dedicated activist and Bicycle Mayor of Tbilisi navigates urban hurdles in a ceaseless quest. Through her journey, the film unveils the paradoxical world taking shape around bicycles and cyclists in surreal urban complexities.

The film observes the restoration of a Georgian cultural heritage monument that was damaged by a Russian missile and the life of those living near it.