101 minutes / Color
English / English subtitles
Release: 2013
Copyright: 2012
A filmmaker puts out a casting call for young adults, aged 15- to 23. The director wants to make a film about growing up in her home country, Georgia, and find commonalities across social and ethnic lines. She travels through cities and villages interviewing the candidates who responded and filming their daily lives.
The boys and girls who responded to the call are radically different from one another, as are their personal reasons for auditioning. Some want be movie stars and see the film as a means to that end; others want to tell their personal story. One girl wants to call to account the mother who abandoned her; one boy wants to share the experience of caring for his handicapped family members; another wants to clear the name of a brother, currently serving a jail sentence.
Together, their tales weave a kaleidoscopic tapestry of war and love, wealth and poverty, creating an extraordinarily complex vision of a modern society that still echoes with its Soviet past.
"Director Tinatin Gurchiani opens a window into the lives of common folk in her native Georgia, where the post-Soviet era has been plagued by strife, using the premise of a casting call to pull confessions of hopes and dreams from her subjects." —Steve Dollar, The Wall Street Journal
"An offbeat, rewarding essay on diminished dreams… Taps into universal concerns about family, separation and identity. There's a playful, spontaneous touch to these real-world scenes [that] taken together, begin to acquire a cumulative power, suggesting the shared anxieties of all those in the throes of adolescence." —Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
"Provides an intimate and raw glimpse into the challenges faced by the young people of the former Soviet territory." —indieWIRE
"The interesting people, the steady images, and the amazing composition within many of the shots, are breathtaking for their simplicity and energy... Bravely open." —Elias Savada, Film Threat
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