Vienna-based retailer Square Eyes has secured international rights to director Tamar Karandadze and Julien Pebrel’s Kartli Kingdom. The film will have its world premiere in International Competition at the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival (IDFA) from November 13th to 23rd.
“Kartli” refers to both the medieval kingdom of Georgia and the Tbilisi sanatorium that temporarily sheltered refugees from the 1990s Abkhazian war for 30 years. The collapsed buildings have become a recreated “country” with farms, gardens, terraces and rooms where old VHS tapes revive memories of the lost paradise of Abkhazia. The film reveals the trauma and common resilience of exiles through Tamna, Irma, and others. Although time seems to stand still within Kartli’s walls, nothing remains the same.
“Our film tells the story of the community through the Kartli shelter: past, present and imagined future, with touches of tenderness, violence, sadness, memory and humour,” Karandadze and Pebrel said in a statement. “These layers of time are fused in editing, combining visual and audio material. Memories, words and stories from Kartli’s past shape the lives of its inhabitants and form a foundational mythology. These stories resurface during the conversations like underground currents, interrupting the scenes we film. The archival footage adds an explosion of collective memory, showing the impact of the 1992 war on the community.”
“We love that this film offers a glimpse inside the walls of Kartli Sanatorium, where the collective memory of the 1992 Abkhazian war and the current lives of the residents are mixed into a moving and poetic documentary,” said Wouter Jansen, CEO of Square Eyes. “The combination of these two stories makes this film a perfect fit for our catalog.”
The Kartli Kingdom was produced by Ketevan Kipiani for Giorgia’s Sakudoc Films and Jean-Baptiste Bonnet for France’s Habilis Productions. World sales are handled by Square Eyes.
