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Locarno Prizewinner ‘Holy Electricity’ Drops Trailer, Director Tato Kotetishvili Teases Next Project, a Docufiction Set on U.S.-Mexico Border (EXCLUSIVE)


The Georgian cinematographer-turned-director's feature debut charmed the Locarno crowds before traveling to compete at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

A freewheeling, episodic narrative whose artfully composed frames richly capture the comedy and pathos of everyday life, the film is as much about the cousins’ quest to pay off a gambling debt as it is a portrait of and ode to the people of the Georgian capital. A tall, lanky teenager who studied clarinet in a music conservatory by day and let loose in punk rock clubs by night, he instantly struck Kotetishvili as someone who “could bring a lot to the movie.” As Gonga, who loses his father at the film’s outset, the first-time actor charts a meandering course through “Holy Electricity” with his meditations on life’s mysteries and his pursuit of fleeting loves. Filmed, in many cases, in their actual homes, the inhabitants reveal a city steeped not just in the extreme religiosity embodied in its ubiquitous neon crosses — a faith on which Bart and Gonga are eager to cash in — but in the hopes, squabbles and family ties of individuals who, like Kotetishvili, march to the beat of their own drum.

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