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OC Media •

Review | April — Slow Georgian cinema at its most visionary

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore feature is a hypnotic but unflinching portrait of power, violence, pain and gender in rural Georgia.At the end of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature Beginning (2020), a man lies down on the parched earth and slowly disintegrates: ‘For dust you are, and to dust you shall return’. The beginning of Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore feature, April (2024) seems also to draw from Genesis with its amorphous humanoid figure which blindly flounders in a black abyss:  ‘Now the e...
The Telegraph •

Ukraine is about to have a major PoW crisis

When Maksym Kolesnikov returned from almost a year in a Russian prison camp, 32kg lighter than he was before, the first things he wanted were warm socks and fried chicken.Captured in March 2022 while defending Kyiv, Mr Kolesnikov endured relentless horrors at the hands of Russian soldiers.The Ukrainian was tortured with electric shocks and beaten, his knee shattered. He was starved and became emaciated. In the biting cold, Mr Kolesnikov wore the same clothes he was captured in, the same thin soc...
The Moscow Times •

‘My Plays Train the Audience To Stay Human’: Belarusian Playwright Andrei Kureichik - The Moscow Times

“I hate theater,” reads the opening line of “Insulted. Belarus,” the first work Belarusian playwright Andrei Kureichik wrote from exile. It is delivered by a mouthpiece of Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator.” 
Nowhere is the long drama of Lukashenko’s rule better documented than in Kureichik’s work, where unflinching verbatim testimonies from political prisoners sit alongside the fictionalized accounts of his life as a blacklisted writer subjugated by a three-decade author...

In Georgia, democracy refuses to die

If you approach Georgia’s parliament building by day, you will find a misleading hush. Located on the usually busy thoroughfare of Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, by sunrise all that remains of the previous night’s pandemonium is a few police stragglers and a skeleton crew of pressure cleaners who scour layers of fresh black graffiti from its historic facade. As traffic cautiously resumes, some venture to the road with brooms to sweep up broken glass and ashy kindling. These are cosmetic fixes. If...
The Mill •

At the heart of the Cresta Court Hotel storm

‘Altrincham is a very pleasant community, but it’s never had anything to rattle it’

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The New World •

The front Europe doesn’t know it’s fighting

But looks deceive. The blue advertisements I saw across the city were not for Georgia’s vocally pro-European opposition, but for the incumbent Georgian Dream party, a populist group accused of undermining Georgia’s hopes of EU accession in order to draw the country back into Russia’s orbit.When I returned to Tbilisi last month, the city was awash in European blue. Peeling blue signs were flyposted on every available surface. Buses with fresh blue wraps veered through the roads. Blue banners hung...
The i Paper •

The exiled Putin critics fleeing Georgia as Russia tightens its grip

Many accuse the ruling party of squandering the country’s hopes of EU accession and drawing the country back into Putin's orbit IN TBILISI – Under a canopy of grape vines and up a winding staircase, a battered blue door in one of Tbilisi’s compact Italian courtyards leads to Itaka Books, a Russian-owned bookstore fundraising for Ukrainian refugees. It is also an ad hoc gallery, with paintings, sketches and other artwork lining the shelves.One of them catches the eye immediate...
The Guardian •

Journalists refused entry to Azerbaijan energy conference ahead of Cop29

Western journalists were refused entry to an energy industry conference in Azerbaijan earlier this month, reigniting concerns over the state’s crackdown on the media ahead of crucial UN climate talks in Baku later this year.At least three journalists from the UK and France have told the Guardian that they felt “unsafe” after they were denied entry to the Baku Energy Week forum, despite registering with the event organisers weeks in advance.The journalists said they were not given a valid reason...