The Other Bank

Colour, 35 mm
Georgia, Kazakhstan, 2008, 90 min
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

About the film

Little Tedo and his mother were forced to flee their native Abkhazia during the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. His father was seriously ill and had to stay behind in Abkhazia. Several years later, 12-year-old Tedo is trying to scrape a living with his mother on the outskirts of the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Tedo helps out in a car repair shop, while his mother works as a shop assistant. Tedo finds it hard to come to terms with his difficult situation and with his life as a refugee. When he comes across his mother with a lover one day, he decides to go back to Abkhazia to seek out his father, whom he has not heard from since he arrived in Georgia. During his wretched journey to "the other bank”, Tedo faces vulnerability and encounters hostility, but he also finds compassion. The Other Bank is a universal story which speaks of the consequences of war, of nationalism and of children who were forced by circumstances to grow up before their time.

About the director

George Ovashvili (b. 1963, Mtskheta, Georgia) attended the Polytechnic Institute (1981-1986) and subsequently graduated from the Georgian State Institute of Cinema and Theatre in 1996. He worked as a stage actor and director and has made several internationally successful short films, such as Eye Level (Zgvis donidan, 2005), which won an award in the Panorama section at the Berlinale in 2005. His feature debut The Other Bank was premiered in the section Generation Kplus at this year’s Berlinale.