What Does the Mud Whisper

In a land where mud holds memory, a little girl named Tako drives us through myth and imagination, crafting new stories from ancient echoes. 

In the heart of Georgia, where myth and reality intertwine, little Tako embarks on a journey to uncover the ancient secret of the region’s healing mud. For generations, people have travelled to this mystical place, seeking cures for their ailments and hoping to prolong their lives. This documentary portrays the life of a child, which symbolises the people who shape and sustain contemporary myths, revealing how ordinary folk craft legends that blur the lines between healing, belief, and imagination.

Programme section: New Talents Competition
Original title: რას ჩურჩულებს ტალახი | Year: 2025 | Duration: 18′
Country: Romania, Netherlands | Language: Georgian | Subtitles: English
Director: Dea Tcholokava | Production: Irina Gelashvili – Radium Films | Editing: Eka Tsotsoria, Dea Tcholokava | Cinematography: Bartosz Błędowski | Music: Nika Phaniashvili | Sound: Paata Godziashvili

FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION) 

Kraków Film Festival, 2025 – Premiere | Doc Edge Festival, 2025 | Camden International Film Festival, 2025 | DOC NYC, 2025 | DOK Leipzig, 2025

DIRECTOR’S BIO 

Dea Tcholokava is a Georgian filmmaker with an academic background in socio-political sciences and filmmaking, having studied in both Georgia and Germany. She has collaborated with the Caucasus-based media platform Chai Khana on several short films, including “Traffic Diary” and “Of Kids and Sea”. Dea has also worked as an editor and assistant director alongside esteemed Georgian filmmakers such as Lana Gogoberidze, Tato Kotetishvili, and Bakur Bakuradze. Her recent short documentary “What Does the Mud Whisper” premiered at the Kraków Film Festival in 2025. Currently, she is a Documenta Archive and Goethe-Institut fellow in Kassel, Germany.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

The country where I was born and raised is strange; every little thing there has its story, its myth. We don’t know exactly where those folk myths and legends come from, if they come from individuals or collectives, or if those myths are real stories. What road did they take, and how would they transfer during time and space? When I first arrived in Akhtala, I began to observe this mystical place and its current life. I was obsessed with its galactic mud and the way it is frozen in time through its mystical craters and lakes. Day by day, I got to know that this place does not only freeze in time, but this is the place where belief, hope, healing and brutal reality mix and this mixture is giving birth to myths and legends. There, in the dark volcano, dreams and reality juxtapose. With every new second, a new story is boiling in the mud crater. People there live in stories and myths which transcend time and space.