North Caucasian Cinema
September to December
From September to December 2025, Filmhuis Cavia will screen a selection of films from the North Caucasian region, specifically Chechnya and Georgia. Join us for these special films, each brought to you with an introduction by programmer Hava Masaeva.
Chechnya and Georgia are both powerful, yet often under-represented voices in the world of cinema. These are places that carry a certain intrinsic cinematic character in the way they are built and in the way the people in them (co-)exist. Still, the films that bloom out of them, don’t get seen enough and are not talked about enough. Chechen cinema specifically has only recently started being more in the public eye, with a Chechen film premiering at Cannes in 2025 for the very first time, and another one at the Berlinale in 2022 – this last film also being a feauture on this Cavia program (The Cage is Looking for a Bird by Malika Musaeva). This program aims to further develop the reaching of North Caucasian films, to hopefully help them acquire a more visible place in the cinema-landscape.
However, what connects these films, is not just geography, but some kind of poetry as well. Each of them carry a simple yet deeply poetic meaning in their narrative as well as in their visual language. They mysteriously intrigue the viewer in a subtle way, some more than others. Art, romance, folk, humour, drama – it’s all in there. Genres do not define this program. As a mix of a little bit of everything, it takes a risk in putting films that don’t seem to belong next to each other, along each other anyway. Some of these directors are a bit more known, others are up and coming and deserve to be heard. Filmhuis Cavia offers them this place, and hopes you’ll join us.
All films will be with English subtitles.
Thursday 25 September, 20:15
CLASSIC
At Filmhuis Klappei, Antwerpen
The Wishing Tree
Tengiz Abuladze | 1976 | Georgia | 107’
This adaptation of Giorgi Leonidze’s short stories sees twenty-two episodes coalesce into one phantasmagoric narrative. Set in pre-revolutionary Georgia, it follows a young woman forced into marriage by her village elders despite her love for another man. Drifting poetically from one incident to the next, this gorgeously sustained pastorale from one of Georgia’s great auteurs creates a sense of the rich tapestry of Georgian village life, and the tragic consequences of community dispute.
This screening will exceptionally take place at Filmhuis Klappei in Antwerp, in collaboration with fc dollyshot.
Sunday 26 October, 20:30
DOCU
The Cage is Looking for a Bird
Malika Musaeva | 2023 | FR, RU | 87’ | EN subtitles
Yakha is 17 and loves roaming about the fields with her friend Madina. Her home is a village in Chechnya where she lives with her mother and little brother. She is self-composed by nature and knows what she wants, but is also open to life – which begins to take shape in the form of certain cultural and social concepts. Madina wants to get married; Yakha’s older sister wants a divorce. Her mother is against it – after all, she herself managed to persevere. Together they visit the grave of their father who died in the second Chechen war.
This debut film by Malika Musaeva impresses with its stylistically and narratively unobtrusive cinematic impressionism that succeeds in balancing the main character’s carefree youthfulness and inner maturity. Yakha’s complex emotional world is conveyed primarily in terms of atmosphere, via looks and gestures, landscapes and movements in the air. The deep rift between tradition and modernity, and between gendered reality and self-determination, is all the more forcefully revealed. A film about what it means to be and live as a young woman, and the melancholy that lies within that.
Thursday 6 November, 20:30
CLASSIC
Pirosmani
Georgiy Shengelaya | 1969 | Soviet Georgia | 85’ | EN subtitles
Pirosmani is a biographical film about the great Georgian painter – primitivist Niko Pirosmanashvili (1862-1918). An unknown, self-taught painter roams the streets of a city, painting his pictures. The local people only know that his name is Nikola Pirosmani, that he is a kind and honest person, but nobody takes his painting seriously. To make his living and be able to buy paints, Nikola opens up a food shop. But very soon he goes bankrupt, for he is giving away butter and cheese to anyone who got no money. Already gravely ill, he paints his last picture, imbued with light, joy and love for life.
Thursday 27 November, 20:30
CONTEMPORARY
Time is + Temo Re
Zaur Kourazov (1994) is a Chechen filmmaker who graduated from KASK Ghent with his short film Time Is. For this evening, Cavia asked him to be a guest curator and to pick another film to screen alongside his.
Time Is
Zaur Kourazov | 2020 | Belgium | 21’ | EN subtitles
In a quiet and snowy Chechen village, mother tells her daughter about the return of Zara – their relative, who left this place 20 years ago. Outside, the whole world is hidden in a thick white fog. For both women, the upcoming meeting is a bright event in their dull daily life that they are very much looking forward to. Time Is dwells on themes of memory, identity and bonds from intercultural aspects and explores the 'in betweenness'.
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Temo Re
Anka Gujabidze | 2025 | Georgia | 50’ | EN subtitles
Directed and shot by Anka Gujabidze on a shoestring budget, the film freely adapts Temo Rekviashvili’s novel Courier’s Tales, which was itself a hybrid memoir of his life as a scooter courier when unable to get much acting work. With Rekviashvili playing himself, Gujabidze condenses his book into a single day of ranging around his city and the various escapades that he becomes involved in along the way. Shot on a still camera and pit together in the edit, Temo Re is a photomontage that obviously bears a resemblance to Chris Marker’s La Jetée but feels completely different, a charming and slightly surreal shaggy dog story.
Friday 12 December, 20:30
CLASSIC
Some Interviews on Personal Matters
Lana Gogoberidze | 1978 | Soviet Georgia | 95’ | EN subtitles
A pioneering work of feminist filmmaking from the legendary Lana Gogoberidze, Some Interviews on Personal Matters is one of the most vital films produced in Soviet Georgia. The iconic Sofiko Chiaureli (The Colour of Pomegranates) stars as a journalist struggling to balance her commitment to her work and the demands of her unfaithful husband. Gogoberidze drew on her own tumultuous life story for this portrait of a woman in search of the true meaning of equality. Some Interviews on Personal Matters is a love letter to women.