The Kartli Kingdom
An observational documentary about Kartli, a crumbling sanatorium in Tbilisi that became a home to refugees fleeing the Abkhazia war – a palace of life and death where a temporary refuge has endured for three decades, and dreams of a promised land slowly fade away.
Named after Georgia’s medieval kingdom, Kartli has become a world unto itself: a recreated country with its own farm, gardens, terraces and rooms where old VHS tapes bring memories of a lost paradise back to life. Through the lives of its residents, the film explores exile, trauma and shared resilience, revealing a community caught between memory, loss and the possibility of change.
SCREENINGS
Thursday 5 November 20:45
Friday 6 November 16:15
Director Tamar Kalandadze will be present for a Q&A on 5 November
Programme section(s): Docs Open Debates
Original title: ქართლის ცხოვრება | Year: 2025 | Runtime: 104′
Country: Georgia, France, Qatar | Language: Georgian | Subtitles: English
Director: Tamar Kalandadze, Julien Pebrel | Production: Ketevan Kipiani – Sakdoc Film; Jean-Baptiste Bonnet – Habilis Productions | Cinematography: Tamar Kalandadze, Julien Pebrel | Editing: François Sculier, Eka Tsotsoria, Julien Pebrel, Tamar Kalandadze | Sound: Emmanuel Soland | Music: Nika Pasuri
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, 2025 – World Premiere, Best Directing Award, Special Mention for the Best First Feature Award | Tbilisi International Film Festival, 2025 | Trieste Film Festival, 2026 – Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa Prize for Best Documentary | Göteborg Film Festival, 2026 | Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival, 2026 | goEast Film Festival, 2026 | DOK.fest München, 2026 | DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, 2026
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Tamar Kalandadze (1990, Tbilisi) is a Georgian filmmaker and media artist. A graduate of the Caucasus School of New Cinema, she participates in art residencies and group exhibitions.
Julien Pebrel is a French director and photographer based in Paris and Tbilisi. His photography focuses on everyday life in regions marked by recent history and has been published in major outlets and exhibited internationally.
Together, Kalandadze and Pebrel create documentary projects exploring memory, exile, and Georgia’s recent history. Their first feature documentary, The Kartli Kingdom, is the result of a seven-year collaboration.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Kartli is the name of the old Kingdom of Georgia, the cradle of the identity of modern Sakartvelo. It’s also the name of a sanatorium in Tbilisi where dozens of Georgian families, refugees from the Abkhazian conflict (1992–1993), settled 30 years ago. Fleeing the shore of the Black Sea, they found refuge, by the irony of fate, on the shore of Tbilisi’s Zgva, the “Sea of Tbilisi”, the artificial lake facing the sanatorium. Before the independence of Georgia, during the Soviet period, this sanatorium used to be a high-quality heart hospital, but as it was almost empty during the civil war, the families settled here. Today, things have changed: resettlement has started, very slowly, but it has started. The hope is there for everybody to have, one day, a decent home. A hope that is also an angst for a lot of them: the angst of leaving this building, the place where, after the war, they found a community, a family, and where they have lived through unbearable exile.
