Smoke-grey slopes. Mud-track roads. Squat, smart houses. And armed strangers asking you your nationality. This is the opening to Tangerines (dir. Zaza Urushadze, 2013), a joint Estonian-Georgian production about lives caught in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict of 1992-1993. The self-declared Republic of Abkhazia is still claimed – and recognised by the majority of UN members, with the notable exception of Russia – by Georgia to be its territory.
Tangerines is Estonia’s entry for the 2015 Oscars (Best Foreign Language Film), and the first picture about the conflict (let alone the South Caucasus) to make the final nominations. Georgia’s Corn Island (dir. Giorgi Ovashvili, 2014) addressed the frozen conflict through the parable of an old man and his daughter, eking out an existence in an island on the Ingur River, dividing Abkhazia and Georgia. But Corn Island failed to make the shortlist. Up against Leviathan (dir. Andrei Zviagintsev, 2014) and Ida (dir. Paweł Pawlikowski, 2014), Tangerine’s prospects of winning are probably slim.
Nevertheless, Urushadze’s script and direction tap deep into issues still facing Georgia and Abkhazia, namely, recognition and reconciliation. Just over twenty years after one of the bloodiest post-Soviet conflicts first erupted on the Black Sea coast, Tangerines seems to offer a model, however fragmented, of resolution between sides, which have expended considerable effort on demonising one another. But while moves are made on screen, life on the ground suggests otherwise.
