The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear

It is quite a daring storytelling format that Georgian Tinatin Gurchiani has chosen for her first feature length documentary. She has invited (mostly) young people, some of them kids, for a film casting, where she from behind the camera asks them questions about their lives, a rather direct and personal approach that leads to sequences, where you go with them to their homes or with them on missions in life, or you are taken on some visual tours into beautiful and fascinating Georgia.

Daring because you introduce some characters, make us viewers curious to have more, to go deeper, and then you leave them again. It is sometimes irritating with too brief encounters. The casting, however, the variety of characters in age and background, makes one happy at the end of the film – yes, we were given a mosaic picture, the director’s pov, of her country, told through some of its citizens, in a respectful, melancholic tone with an amazing cinematographic work on Georgian landscapes. The two fairy tale linked stories – the boy in the beginning of the film who loves Little Red Riding Hood, and the young woman at the end of the film who feels like a Cinderella – are those of the stories that come out best, the latter in an extremely dramatic way, whereas a story of a brother to a prisoner leaves you a bit ”who cares”. There is a lot of pain in this original film that also has references to the conflicts and wars with Abkhazia and Russia. Again, it was pleasant to watch, with a charming hybrid docu-fiction style.   

Georgia, 2012, 97 mins.

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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