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Georgia’s Ana Urushadze Talks ‘Supporting Role,’ ‘Exploration of Masculinity’ That Follows Locarno Prizewinner ‘Scary Mother’
The writer-director's sophomore film, after her first-feature Locarno prizewinner, follows an aging actor on the downward slope of his career.
Once Urushadze began to focus on that character’s narrative potential, “the possible themes that I could include in the script automatically started unveiling themselves,” she said, among them an “exploration of masculinity and the struggle to find a place in a changing world.” She also delved into a plight that she described as sadly common for Georgian actors. Veteran Georgian screen star Dato Bakhtadze, whose credits include 2004 best picture Oscar winner “Crash” and Timur Bekmambetov’s “Ben-Hur,” was tapped for the lead role as Niaz, an aging actor long accustomed to playing a “heroic, flawless, super-human character” who “adopted that image in real life, too, and was showered with praise, widely admired by his fans,” said the director. In a rapturous review, Variety ’s Jessica Kiang described the “darkly daring” film as an “exhilaratingly offbeat oddity” and “a startling debut that wholly earns its place as standard-bearer for one of the most exciting and distinctive national cinemas to have emerged in recent years.”
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