Georgian director Anna Urushadze, whose debut film Scary Mother won Best First Feature at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival, is gearing up to direct her highly anticipated second feature, The Supporting Role. The writer-director is presenting the film this week in the works-in-progress section of CineLink Industry Days, the industry arm of the Sarajevo Film Festival.
The film follows a famous star of Georgian cinema who, due to a casting session with a young female director, embarks on a strange and fateful journey of self-transformation. He is used to playing the charming hero, but is insulted when he is offered a supporting role. But gradually, without even realizing it, he begins to identify with and seemingly unconsciously accept the role he has been offered.
Talk to diverse In Sarajevo, Oroshadze explained that the film was inspired by auditions she had held for her first film, when she was looking for an elderly man to play the heroine's father. One of the actors who attended the screening was disappointed to discover that Oroshadze—a “young, inexperienced girl”—was the writer and director of the film. As a result, he turned down the role.
“I found it really interesting and I started thinking about what his life was like and wondering why he was hurting his ego,” said Oroshadze. “I started seeing the situation from an outside perspective and I found the dynamic of this duo really interesting – a young, up-and-coming director and an older, established actor.”
Once Oroshadze began focusing on the character’s narrative potential, she said, “possible themes that I could include in the script started to emerge spontaneously,” including “exploring masculinity and the struggle to find a place in a changing world.” She also delved into a plight she described as sadly common among Georgian actors.
“We have many very talented actors, but unfortunately, almost all of them, with rare exceptions, share the same fate: they live a sad life of low wages, poor health and lack of new roles – especially film roles – and as a result their talent and huge potential are slowly fading away,” she said.
Veteran Georgian screen star Dato Bakhtadze, whose credits include the 2004 Oscar-winning Best Picture film “Crash” and Timur Bekmambetov’s “Ben Hur,” has been cast in the lead role of Niyaz, an aging actor who has long been accustomed to playing “a flawless, supernatural heroic character” and who “has adopted this image in real life as well, and has been widely praised by his fans,” the director said.
Despite the star returning from a 15-year hiatus to deal with personal issues, “time has not passed for him at all,” says Oroshadze. “Because of the big shock he suffered years ago, he was stuck in the past and thought the outside world was still the same. But the world has changed — and so have the people — and the kind of director he always worked with and felt comfortable with.”
Nata Murvanidze plays Niyaz's wife, who directed Scary Mother, which won Best Performance at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Meanwhile, Ellen Maisuradze plays Aza, a young director who “takes charge of her own business.” [Niaz’s] “She takes her destiny into her own hands, and without realizing it, she is accelerating his own transformation,” Oroshadze said.
“Niyaz, in fact, is on a downward trajectory in terms of his career and age, but overall, when you watch the film, you realise that, all this time, he has always been on an upward trajectory in terms of revealing his true self and his true desires.”
The Scary Mother won the Best First Feature Film award at the Locarno Film Festival.
Courtesy of Artizm
The Georgian director's first feature film, which follows a middle-aged woman who finds freedom in the act of writing her first novel, won the Grand Prix in Sarajevo in 2017 and was Georgia's entry into the 90th Academy Awards. In a rave review, diverseThe Sun's Jessica Kiang described the “daring, dark” film as “an extraordinary, exhilarating oddity” and “a stunning debut that fully deserves its place as the standard-bearer for one of the most exciting and distinctive national cinemas to emerge in recent years.”
The film “Supporting Role” is produced by Davit Tsintsadze of Zazafilms, Georgia, Ivo Felt of Allfilm, Estonia, Zeynep Atakan of Zeno Film, Turkey, Andrey Epifanov of Centrain, Switzerland, Eleonora Granata Jenkinson of Melograno Films, USA, Sofio Bedinashvili and Pacho Meburishvili of Inkini Films and Dato Bakhtadze, Georgia.
The film was shot in Georgia by Estonian cinematographer Rain Kotov. Funding came from the Georgian National Film Centre, the Estonian Film Institute, the Estonian Culture Fund, Creative Europe's MEDIA programme, Euroimages and Cinetrain.
The Sarajevo Film Festival takes place from August 16 to 23.
