The Georgian film industry is, in Ana Urushadze’s words, “in a dead-end situation.”
Directors, producers, writers and performers are boycotting the Georgian National Film Center (GNFC). Among other issues, they’re protesting the state funding agency over censorship concerns. “Unfortunately, the people who should care and have the means to turn the situation around don’t do that. It’s a dead-end situation at this point,” she says. “The people boycotting, I know many of them and there are very, very talented people there. Ones who have not had any possibility to do a feature film yet, and possibly will not have [the chance] in the near future. Time goes by, and films are not being made.”
Urushadze’s second feature film, premiering in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival nine years after her debut film Scary Mother won the Heart of Sarajevo, was one of the last projects to make it out before the situation worsened.
The Tbilisi-set Supporting Role follows Niaz Ninua (played by Dato Bakhtadze), a fading Georgian film star accustomed to playing heroic lead roles. After meeting with a young, female director, Aza (Elene Maisuradze), who offers him the chance to play a bizarre and deeply unsympathetic character in her debut feature, Niaz leaves the audition unconvinced (and pretty offended). But he soon embarks on something of an odyssey around the city and gradually surrenders to the role. Captivated by the unknown, meeting characters as elusive as those in a Homer epic, Niaz sets in motion an irreversible process of self-transformation.
