Vedreba

Harsh, archaic customs prevail in a remote mountain village in the Caucasus. Two peoples, the Islamic Kists and Christian Khevsurs, have always lived there in bitter enmity - this is where Abuladze sets two stories based on verse epics by the Georgian national poet Vasha-Pshavela and embedded in an allegorical frame story about the contrast between spirituality and materialism. The spiral of violence is triggered by an act of resistance, of all things, when one man refuses to chop off the right hand of the enemy he has killed according to old custom and is subsequently excluded from his community ... Abuladze's formally and aesthetically fascinating film is bursting with bold, sometimes surreal visual metaphors set against magnificent mountain landscapes. (Florian Widegger)