IN BLOOM

It is the early 1990s in Tbilisi, and childhood is over for the precocious, self-confident Natia and her shy best friend Eka. Their friendship is the only buffer the two girls have against their dysfunctional families and the fears and uncertainties of life in the post-Soviet era. Both 14-year-olds find themselves having to fend off, in their very different ways, acts of aggression that are usually male in origin. While Eka refuses to be ruffled by the challenges of living in a brutalized society, Natia is determined to give as good as she gets. So when she receives the gift of a pistol from an admirer, some kind of showdown looks inevitable… In their debut feature Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß deftly weave disparate plot strands into a coming-of-age drama that also delivers a fascinating account of recent Georgian history. Worn down by the weight of tradition, wars and modernity, the men seem to have lost their hereditary role in society, whereas increasing numbers of young women will no longer put up with obsolete patriarchal structures.