Uta Beria's film "Tear Gas" to have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival

Uta Beria's feature film "Tear Gas" will have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival's Concorso Cineasti del Presente section.

The new film is a co-production of three countries - Georgia, France and Germany. The film is produced by the Georgian company "1991 Productions", which was joined by the French "Tripode Productions" and the German "70 Steps".

"Tear Gas" is Uta Beria's second feature film, the script of which he himself wrote and the idea for which came to him during his visit to the protest on June 20, 2019.

The main roles in the film are played by Mzia Arabuli, Taisia ​​Eradze, Kato Kalatozishvili, Gaga Shishinashvili and Boris Andronikashvili.

“Elene, 16, lives in a refugee settlement with her father and grandmother. Elene’s parents are divorced. Elene has no relationship with her mother, who has moved to Tbilisi, because she cannot forgive her for abandoning her family.

Her grandmother thinks that Elene is prone to self-destruction, and is convinced that it would be beneficial for the teenager to see her mother and restore her relationship with her, so she decides to join her neighbors who are going to a protest in Tbilisi and secretly meet the mother and daughter there.

The protest in which Elene, her grandmother, and her neighbors find themselves combines real events that took place during various civil demonstrations from the recent history of Georgia.

Elene’s special forces father, along with his colleagues, is mobilized for the protest and does not know that among the demonstrators, whom he is waiting for an order to disperse, are members of his family,” we read in the film’s synopsis.

As for Uta Beria’s other works, her full-length debut is “Negative Numbers.” It premiered at the Rome Independent Film Festival (2019). The film has won numerous awards, including the European Union Prize for Human Rights in Cinema, which was awarded at the Tbilisi International Film Festival in 2019.