Impermanence

Zeng Zeng : 2018
Yun shui

Monk Can Chen has a cloudy past, and withdraws from a temple bearing a sack of money. Innkeeper Wang Haili labours under an uneasy conscience while being haunted by his dead wife, Su Mei. Retiree Fang Yiguo has abandoned his son Shangqin, only to find out that emotional entanglements and unacknowledged family sins have unavoidable consequences. All three are variously drawn to a Buddhist temple in rural Hunan, China, where each discovers that past sins (theft, murder, abandonment) accrue complex karmic debts, whose consequences are as shocking as they are inevitable. A brilliant interlocking structure only gradually reveals the profound and ineluctable moral universe lying behind these lost and desperate characters' fates. Zeng Zeng's Buddhist riddle of a film, her feature debut, premiered in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2018.

Khibula

George Ovashvili : 2017

In 1991 Zviad Gamsachurdia became the first democratically elected president of the newly independent Georgia, yet within a few months he was ousted in a military coup. He sets out for the mountains with a group of loyalists to regroup with his supporters. With their help he will retake power, or so he earnestly hopes. The film uses historical events as a frame to shape an archetypal story told with light melancholy and an unmistakable visual poetic. Set against an imposing Caucasus backdrop, we witness a man fighting for power while waging an internal struggle as he heads to meet his fate. George Ovashvili's feature premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2017.

City of the Sun

Rati Oneli : 2017
Mzis qalaqi

The Georgian town of Chiatura was once a vibrant centre of industry, but the monotonous sound of work in the expansive manganese mines has essentially been replaced by silence. The houses, production halls, theatres, stadiums and the unique system of public cable cars – previously the pride of the town – are now rusting and rotting away. Rampant vegetation turns buildings into ruins, completing the image of omnipresent decay. And yet people have not disappeared entirely from this place. The film's crystal-clear style, in which each shot is given the length it needs, seeks out the photogenic side of decay and explores the specific nature of the lost souls that continue to live here. Rati Oneli's feature-length directorial debut premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.