Nominated for Best Documentary Feature
Q&A with Director Luka Beradze moderated by Babak Jalali
What are the costs of the half-truths that politicians tell? In 2012, the Georgian president in the race for re-election, promised subsidized dental care to the country’s least well off. As medical practitioners began removing rotten teeth with the promise of replacements in the months that followed, the president lost. Smiling Georgia tells a story about the whims of political power and the defiance of those who usually hold the least of it.
The promise of a lifetime seems too good to pass up: before the 2012 Georgian election, the incumbent president offers to replace decaying teeth to all the poorest members of the population. Dentists are deployed to villages, and those who agree to vote for the governing party get their teeth removed.
Unfortunately for them, the president loses and the ‘Smiling Georgia’ campaign evaporates like a puff of laughing gas. The result is a nation of elderly people who – after many years – are still waiting to get their teeth replaced.
Debuting at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Luka Beradze’s film takes its time by following various villagers and registering their emotional state: some feel betrayed by the political class, some are accepting of their situation, while a man flies into a rage when a local politician shows up to make amends.
A warning against all politicians’ behaviour – especially in pre-election times – the film also functions as a ringing denunciation of their attitude towards voters: for them, life is a chess game and the common people acquire the status of chess pieces. This is a broken promise that will make you grind your teeth in anger.
Review by Mickey La Rosa
Supported by Life Through Cinema
