The day after his funeral, the corpse of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, turns up in his son's garden. Although it is secretly reburied, the corpse keeps returning until the police capture the local woman who is responsible. This woman says that Varlam should never be laid to rest since his Stalin-like reign of terror led to the disappearance of her family and friends.
Direction
Abuladze's fearless Soviet-era allegory that got made by miracle.
Production
Expressionist sets that make Georgia look like fever dream Germany.
Acting
Makharadze playing three generations of complicity.
Director
Tengiz Abuladze
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during glasnost but shot in 1984, it was shelved until Gorbachev's reforms—making its release a political event as seismic as its content.
The recurring motif of churches being destroyed and rebuilt mirrors Georgia's own cultural erasure under Soviet rule; Abuladze buried these images like Ketevan buries her truth.
SU
