About the film

A filmmaker returns to her home country of Georgia to make a documentary about the lives of young people there. Wanting to get in touch with youngsters from every social background and part of the country, she announces through a variety of channels that she is going to organize a casting call. The leitmotif of this film is the search for the ideal protagonist, with interviews with the candidates and scenes from their day-to-day lives. The boys and girls responding to the call are radically different from one another, as are their personal reasons for auditioning. Some want to be famous movie stars, while others simply want to tell their story. And one girl wants to call her mother to account, after having been abandoned by her years before. Thirteen-year-old Ramin has to work hard in the small mountain village where he lives, helping take care for his handicapped family members. And Gotcha defends his brother, who is serving 25 years in jail. These extraordinary and touching stories about war, love, dreams and poverty paint a kaleidoscopic picture of a modern society that still echoes with its Soviet past.

Wybrane nagrody i festiwale / Selected festivals and awards: 2013 – FF Sundance: Nagroda dla Najlepszego Reżysera / Sundance FF: Best Director, 2012 – MFF Tbilisi: Nagroda dla Najlepszego Filmu Gruzińskiego / Tblisi IFF: Best Georgian Film, 2013 – MFFD Saloniki / Thessaloniki IFFD, 2012 – DOK Leipzig / DOK Lepizg, 2012 – MFF Amsterdam / IDFA, 2013 – MFFD Zagreb Dox. / Zagreb Dox. IFFD, 2013 – FF Hongkong / Hong Kong FF