BLACKBIRD, BLACKBIRD, BLACKBERRY

“Out walking one morning picking blackberries in a Georgian village, local woman Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) loses her footing and plunges down the side of a ravine, narrowly saving herself from falling into the churning waters below. It’s an uncharacteristic misstep for this stolid, taciturn shop proprietor, and as she stares down at the spot where she almost ended up, and locks eyes with a vision of her dead self washed up on the shore, something clicks inside her.

Mere hours later, she all but pounces on the delivery guy who’s arrived at her store with a consignment of shelf stock, making passionate love to him on the storeroom floor. It’s her first-ever sexual encounter, and one she is careful to conceal from the inhabitants of the small, gossipy village in which she lives: the man who has taken her virginity, Murman (Temiko Chichinadze), is a married father of two.

The stage seems set for a story of doomed liaisons and small-town melodrama … For Etero, everything’s changed, yet nothing has: she’s still a marginal figure among her so-called friends; she still conducts herself with proud, laconic confidence; …

But when she sits alone by the dining table one evening, exulting in the feel of her own body, the warmth of the long-suppressed fire inside her suffuses the frame for the very first time.

“Chavleishvili is terrific, delivering a performance that carries the picture and sets its tone. Her Etero displays a combination of severity and sensuality that should be incongruous but works beautifully. And the character is mirrored by the film’s Kaurismäkiesque colour palette, which seems gloomy at first glance but is revealed to be rich, full-blooded and strikingly handsome.”

Film Facts

• Amongst 14 European awards, winner of 2024 Swiss Film Prize for Best Film and Best Screenplay.