Georgia has selected Rusudan Glurjidze’s drama The Antique as its submission to the international feature film category for the 97th Oscars.
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The selection comes just two weeks after the feature was caught up in an unexpected legal battle at the Venice Film Festival when an emergency decree issued on behalf of Russian and Croatian producers led to the temporary suspension of its screening in the parallel Giornate degli Autori section.
The drama takes inspiration from the real-life illegal expulsion of thousands of Georgian nationals from Russia in 2006, a group that included the director.
The deportations were part of the so-called 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy, sparked by Georgia ’s arrest of a number of Russian military officers on charges of espionage and terrorism, when Vladimir Putin was in his first term as Russian president.
The film revisits the period through the story of the friendship between an elderly Russian man and a young Georgian woman in the city of Saint Petersburg.
The feature is lead produced by Zurab Magalashvili at Tbilisi-based Cinetech with the Czech Republic’s Cinetrain SA, Icelandic company Whitepoint Digital, and Germany’s Basis Berlin Filmproduction.
The choice of The Antique as Georgia’s Oscar candidate was taken Thursday under a secret ballot of a special commission organized by the Georgian National Film Center.
The Antique was one of two frontrunners alongside Dea Kulumbegashvili’s drama April, about a rural obstetrician-gynecologist who performs illegal abortions for women. The latter film premiered in Competition at Venice winning the Special Jury Prize, and now heads to San Sebastian.
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The other submitted films were Beka Sikharulidze’s From Life to Life , Davit Kafiashvili ’s The Man Who Stood at the Booth and Khatuna Vashadze Devil’s Paradise .
In a close ballot, The Antique received five votes, while April garnered four. None of the other films submitted for consideration received votes.
The submission period for production companies nominating full-length films on behalf of Georgia for the 2024 Oscars ran from August 16-September 6.
Appointed by the director of Georgia’s National Film Center, the committee comprised Zaza Shatirishvili (cultural and cinema researcher), Vladimir Kacharava (producer), Edmond Minashvili (producer), Levan Gigineishvili (philosopher), Nikoloz Shengelaya (cinematographer), Khatuna Khundadze (producer), Giorgi Chumburidze (director), Bachana Odisharia (head of the film production department at the film center) and Giorgi Tskvedian (junior specialist in the film export department of the center).
The Antique had its scheduled screening in the early days of Venice suspended due to a mysterious decree issued on behalf of Russian and Croatian producers who said their were copyright issues with the screenplay.
These claims were contested by the film’s Georgian producers as well as its sales agent MPM International, amid suggestions that the move to prevent the film screening was politically motivated.
A lawyer acting for the Giornate degli Autori filed a counterclaim and was able to overturn the decree at the eleventh hour, allowing the film to world premiere in the section September 6.
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