Georgia’s Ana Urushadze Talks ‘Supporting Role,’ ‘Exploration of Masculinity’ That Follows Locarno Prizewinner ‘Scary Mother’

Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze, whose debut “Scary Mother” won best first feature at the Locarno Film Festival in 2017, is readying her anticipated sophomore feature, “Supporting Role.” The writer-director is presenting the film this week in the works-in-progress section of CineLink Industry Days, the industry arm of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

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The film follows a once-famous star of Georgian cinema, who — triggered by a casting session with a young female director — embarks on a bizarre and fatalistic odyssey of self-transformation. Accustomed to playing charming heroic protagonists, he is insulted by the offer of a supporting role. But gradually, without realizing it himself, he starts getting into character and seemingly unconsciously accepts the role he has been offered to play.

Speaking to Variety in Sarajevo, Urushadze explained that the film was inspired by the auditions for her first feature, when she was searching for an elderly man to play the role of the protagonist’s father. One of the actors who turned up was put off when he discovered that Urushadze — “a young and inexperienced girl” — was the writer and director. As a result, he turned down the role.

“I found this really interesting and started thinking about what his life might have been like and questioned why his ego was hurt,” said Urushadze. “I started seeing the situation from an outside perspective and found this duo dynamism really intriguing — a young debutante director and a well-known elderly actor.”

Once Urushadze began to focus on that character’s narrative potential, “the possible themes that I could include in the script automatically started unveiling themselves,” she said, among them an “exploration of masculinity and the struggle to find a place in a changing world.” She also delved into a plight that she described as sadly common for Georgian actors.

“We have many immensely talented actors, but unfortunately, nearly all, with rare exceptions, share the same fate: they lead sad lives of low salary, poor health and scarcity of new roles — especially film roles — and as a result their talent and huge potential slowly wear off,” she said.

Veteran Georgian screen star Dato Bakhtadze, whose credits include 2004 best picture Oscar winner “Crash” and Timur Bekmambetov’s “Ben-Hur,” was tapped for the lead role as Niaz, an aging actor long accustomed to playing a “heroic, flawless, super-human character” who “adopted that image in real life, too, and was showered with praise, widely admired by his fans,” said the director.

Though the star is returning from a 15-year hiatus to deal with personal issues, “for him time has not passed at all,” said Urushadze. “Because of the major trauma he underwent years ago, he is stuck in the past and thinks that the outside world remains the same. But the world has moved on — and the people, too — and the type of director that he always worked with and was comfortable with has also changed.”

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Starring across from Bakhtadze as Niaz’s wife is Nata Murvanidze, who led “Scary Mother,” winning best performance at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Elene Maisuradze, meanwhile, plays Aza, the young director who “holds [Niaz’s] fate in her hands” and, “without realizing it herself, accelerates the process of self-transformation in him,” said Urushadze.

“Niaz is, indeed, on a downward trajectory regarding his career and lifespan, but overall, when you see the film you realize that, simultaneously all this time, he has always been on an upward trajectory regarding unveiling his true self and his true desires.”

The Georgian filmmaker’s buzzy first feature , which follows a middle-aged woman who finds freedom in the act of writing her first novel, won the top prize in Sarajevo in 2017 and was Georgia’s entry for the 90th Academy Awards. In a rapturous review , Variety ’s Jessica Kiang described the “darkly daring” film as an “exhilaratingly offbeat oddity” and “a startling debut that wholly earns its place as standard-bearer for one of the most exciting and distinctive national cinemas to have emerged in recent years.”

“Supporting Role” is produced by Davit Tsintsadze of Georgia’s Zazafilms, Ivo Felt of Allfilm in Estonia, Zeynep Atakan of Zeyno Film in Turkey, Andrey Epifanov of Cinetrain in Switzerland, Eleonora Granata Jenkinson of Melograno Films in U.S., and Sophio Bedenashvili and Bacho Meburishvili of Enkeny Films and Dato Bakhtadze in Georgia.

The film was shot on location in Georgia by Estonian cinematographer Rein Kotov. Funding came from the Georgian National Film Center, Estonian Film Institute, Estonian Cultural Endowment, MEDIA Programme of Creative Europe, Eurimages and Cinetrain.

The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.

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