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Tengiz Abuladze

Tengiz Abuladze

Directing

Biography

Tengiz Abuladze (Georgian: თენგიზ აბულაძე; 31 January 1924 – 6 March 1994) was a Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre teacher and People's Artist of the USSR. He is regarded as one of the best Soviet directors. 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. He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1980. 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. He is most famous for his film trilogy: The Plea (The Supplication) (1968), The Wishing Tree (1977), and Repentance (1984, released 1987), which won him the Lenin Prize (1988) and the first Nika Award for Best Picture. Repentance won the Special Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. In 1987 he was a member of the jury at the 15th Moscow International 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. Repentance revolves around the death of an old tyrant, Varlam Aravidze, and the refusal of a woman, Ketevan Barateli, to leave his corpse in peace. She repeatedly disinters the corpse and at the trial disinters also the forbidden secrets of the past. Aravidze is universalized as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin, but most obviously as Stalin's fellow Georgian Lavrentiy Beria.

Known For

The Wishing Tree
7.0

Marita arrives at a small village in Georgia to live with her aunt. She meets a poor young lad, Gedia, and falls in love with him. But her relatives are determined to marry the girl off to a local rich man…

The Wishing Tree

1976
Somebody Else's Children
6.3

Nato, a student, befriends two children in the street, a brother and a sister. She does not know that their father just broke up with his wife on the grounds that she was not able to find a common language with the children. Once he meets with Nato they fall in love, but their relationship does not last long because one day he meets his estranged wife by chance and goes off to be with her, abandoning both Nato and the children. Desperately Nato wants to take off, too, but realizes she can not leave the children alone.

Somebody Else's Children

1958
Repentance
7.1

The day after his funeral, the corpse of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, turns up in his son's garden. Although it is secretly reburied, the corpse keeps returning until the police capture the local woman who is responsible. This woman says that Varlam should never be laid to rest since his Stalin-like reign of terror led to the disappearance of her family and friends.

Repentance

1987
Me, Grandma, Iliko and Ilarion
6.2

The residents of a Georgian village bungle their way through war, peace, life and death.

Me, Grandma, Iliko and Ilarion

1962
Who Invented the Wheel?
8.0

After graduating from school, Seva Losev gets a job at a chemical plant. A lyrical film about the first experiences of independent life and first love.

Who Invented the Wheel?

1966
Magdana's Donkey
6.4

This chamber drama is set in Georgia on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A simple peasant family makes its living by selling yogurt which the Magdany widow takes every morning to the town market. Once, in their mother’s absence, the children – six-year-old Mikho and three-year-old Kato – found an abandoned donkey on a road leading to their village. The foundling was fed, tended, and the moment the donkey opened its big, tender eyes, it was named “Lurdja”, which means “blue-eyed”. Surrounded by love and care, the donkey became a big help in the poor household. But this idyll was not to last long…

Magdana's Donkey

1955
A Necklace for My Beloved
5.1

Three guys are living in a Dagestan aul, and all three are in love with the blue-eyed Serminaz. According to a mountaineers’ tradition, a young man seeking the hand and the heart of a beloved girl has to make her a present that she would remember for the rest of her life. The friends set out in search of the special gift…

A Necklace for My Beloved

1971
The Plea
6.5

Brave sons of Khevsureti and Kisteti fight against each to protect their homelands. But, they confront faulty domestic traditions to respect enemy’s true prowess and find themselves in conflict with own compatriots.

The Plea

1967
From the Top!..
N/A

An anthology film comprising two comedy shorts about life in rural Ossetia.

From the Top!..

1975