North American Premiere
Etero, a 48-year-old Georgian woman living a simple life, is known for her independence. She has never married, bears no children, and has run the same small shop in her village all her life. However, when an impromptu affair strikes between herself and the kind-eyed detergent delivery driver in her shop, Etero experiences romance for the first time in her 48 years, and sees this push against her lifelong plea for independence. As the other older women in her village eat cakes and gossip about her strange chosen singularity, Etero retains her strength, weakened only by the love she feels in her involvement in her secret lover. Georgian filmmaker Elena Naveriani brings light to women often overlooked. Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry is based on a novel of the same namesake by Georgian author and feminist Tamta Melashvili.
The spellbinding sensibilities of Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry are a treat to behold.
RogerEbert.com
Supported by
Community Partner
Eka Chavleishvili, Temiko Chinchinadze, Pikria Nikabadze, Anka Khurtsidze, Tamar Mdinaradze
Georgia/Switzerland
2023
Panorama
In Georgian with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Thomas Reichlin, Britta Rindelaub, Ketie Daniela
Screenwriter
Nikoloz Mdivani, Elene Naveriani
Cinematography
Agnesh Pakozdi
Editor
Aurora Franco Vögeli
Production Design
Teo Baramidze
Director
Elena Naveriani
Elene Naveriani is a Georgian director now living in Switzerland. They graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Art in monumental painting in 2003. After a Master in Critical Curatorial Cybermedia at the HEAD – Geneva (Geneva School of Art and Design), they start their studies in Cinema. Their graduation short film Gospel of Anasyrma (2014) was acclaimed for their distinctive signature and stance. Elene’s work is one that makes invisible stories visible, that makes unheard voices heard and creates a space for marginalized lives. Elene practices a cinema of resistance. In 2021, their second feature film Wet Sand made its World Premiere in Locarno in August 2021 and earned the Best Actor’s Prize. Elene is currently developing two further feature projects.
Filmography: I Am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth (2017); Wet Sand (2021)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Sentimental Value
A once-revered director crashes back into his family’s lives, eager to recruit his daughter for a film role. When she declines, he finds a new muse in an eager but unpolished Hollywood star, sending his botched reconciliation spiraling into chaos.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
L'Étranger
Recreating 1940s Algeria in vivid, high contrast black and white cinematography, L'Etranger is erotic, enigmatic and brutal in equal measures, a masterful screen version of Albert Camus's insoluble classic of existential alienation.
The Chronology of Water
Kristen Stewart's fearless directorial debut is based on the best-selling memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), a chronicle of her abusive childhood, traumatized adulthood, and escapes through swimming, drugs, sex, and ultimately writing.