Repentance

Program:

Retrospective program "Century"

Year:

1987

Country:

Soviet Union

Genre:

Fiction

Duration:

153’

Varlam Aravidze is the authoritarian, Stalin-like mayor of a Georgian town. In the days following his funeral, the grave keeps being mysteriously robbed and his corpse appearing in the most unusual places. Eventually, the police arrest a local individual who is believed to be the direct responsible.

Schedule

Tengiz Abuladze

Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre teacher and People's Artist of the USSR. Abuladze studied theatre direction (1943–1946) at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia, and filmmaking at the VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography) in Moscow. He graduated from VGIK in 1952 and in 1953 he joined Gruziya-film (Georgia Film Studios) as a director.

His first film, MAGDANA'S DONKEY (1956), which he directed with Rezo Chkheidze, won the "Best Fiction Short" award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Abuladze came to prominence in the Soviet Union under perestroika when his banned film REPENTANCE, a blistering expose of the Stalinist terror, was released in 1986.

Filmography: Magdana's Donkey (1955), Other People's Children (1958), A Necklace for My Beloved (1971), The Wishing Tree (1976)

Creative team

Director

Tengiz Abuladze

Screenplay

Tengiz Abuladze, Nana Janelidze, Rezo Kveselava

Camera

Mikhail Agranovich

Editing

Guliko Omadze

Production design

Gogi Mikeladze