Named after the late medieval Georgian monarchy that once stood proudly on the same land, ‘Kingdom of Kartli’ is a bitterly ironic nickname for its less than royal accommodation. A ruined sanatorium in a grassy semi-rural area overlooking the bright lights of central Tbilisi in the distance. Once home to a state-of-the-art cardiac hospital that closed in the early 1990s, its wards have since been occupied by hundreds of Georgians who lost their homes in the 1992 Abkhazian war and are now a devastated sovereign territory from which they cannot return. Over the past three decades, what was supposed to be a temporary refuge has become a long-term purgatory, and the eerily stretched stillness of time is poignantly captured in Tamar Karandadze and Julian Pebrel’s debut documentary.
Focusing on a family uprooted by the Abkhazian conflict, Kingdom of Kartli is the documentary equivalent of Rusudan Gurdidze’s Stranger’s Home, a haunting, semi-autobiographical drama that was a huge film festival hit in 2016, and Karandadze and Pebrel’s films share a certain light, even ghostly aesthetic. The co-director and cinematographer’s dimly lit, seemingly translucent cinematography evokes a liminal atmosphere befitting a study of life lived in long-term limbo, but the melancholy is punctuated with neighborhood humanity and humor as the kingdom’s inhabitants cultivate a strong sense of community in their crumbling environment. That balance of warmth and melancholy should carry Kartli Kingdom further on the Doctorfest circuit following its IDFA premiere (and Best Director win).
Calandadze and Pebrel maintain a quiet, unobtrusive presence in the apartments and hallways they film, typically taking an ad hoc approach to scenes of daily interaction, with the conclusion of their first-hand interviews left out of the edit. Drifting between households, the film is characterized by a sense of time dilation and of days merging into one another, building a life almost imperceptibly. One elderly resident said in a weary tone of disbelief that he had been there for 26 years and was waiting for his next move. She remembers when the halls were clean and carpeted, and even during the crossover era, when the space was occupied by both refugees and heart patients.
Some people wait too long. Early on, we learn that a middle-aged resident jumped to his death from a balcony. In the words of a grieving but determined neighbor, “She fell like a leaf while everyone watched.” Some find comfort in family, companionship, and household chores in having easy conversations over coffee and observing housewives who still take pride in their homes, vacuuming faded living rooms or preparing feasts in the kitchen. Home video footage of a raucous wedding party defies an atmosphere of stagnation and decline. A shot of several strong men clumsily maneuvering a coffin down a narrow staircase is played. Cats and dogs, some feral and some fostered, roam the area and display a sense of ownership, all part of the kingdom’s makeshift ecosystem.
But the lifespan of the community there is limited, and it is not due to any political progress or the emergence of a better alternative. Neglect is slowly making the old sanatorium uninhabitable, as cracks in the foundation widen and threaten to split the building in two. Authorities are slow to provide aid or repairs. While the tone of the lawsuits may often be horrifying, there is a quiet anger in the depiction of how displaced people have been kept out of sight and consciousness by a Georgian government that refuses to look back.
Therefore, another mass migration is looming, and this one is likely to become an even more temporary refuge than the one in which multiple generations of children have been raised, although this is unlikely. A family leaving home looks at the apartment they just left and thinks about what they’ll miss about it. “One day I’ll say, ‘If I were still in Kartli,'” says one. The heartbreaking laughter that follows soon after says it all. At once angry and melancholy, bitter and sad, the Kingdom of Kartli reflects a sanctuary that has become a prison for some and vice versa for others.
