REZO

Little Rezo grows up in Georgia during and immediately following the second world war. He loves books and his grandparents, who live in the mountains. Thanks to his lively imagination, the sickly boy never gets bored. For instance, when he’s forced to wait in the hall because he’s late for class, the omnipresent comrades Stalin and Lenin come to life and hop out of their picture frames. One day his grandparents are assigned a German prisoner of war to help with their work and the young boy’s imagination takes flight.
Whether through influential screenplays (MIMINO, KIN-DZA-DZA!) or revolutionary puppet theatre – Revaz “Rezo” Gabriadze left his mark on Soviet cultural history. With REZO, his son Levan “Leo”, the young hero from KIN-DZA-DZA! and today a successful filmmaker in his own right, paints a wonderful portrait of his father, allowing the latter to tell the most personal story of his career: Rezo Gabriadze himself drew the images that bring his biography to life on the big screen here. The result is a splendidly animated documentary film that takes the imagination of children seriously and blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy.