Panopticon

Film critic Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) called Sikharulidze's confident debut a ‘refreshing combination of The 400 Blows and Mean Streets’ that, while reminiscent of Truffaut's and Scorsese's 20th century landmarks, is a story of and for today all its own. The film centres on 18-year-old Sandro (played by the award-winning Data Chachua), who is struggling with the transition from adolescence to manhood. Without his mother, who has left for the USA, and without his father, who has gone to a monastery, Sandro lacks stability and retreats into voyeuristic sexual practices and political extremism. As a viewer, you simply can't take your eyes off this film, whose gaze is, in the words of Variety's Jessica Kiang, ‘piercing and sharp and strange’.