Before Father Gets Back
In a darkened classroom, the white cracked walls serve as a movie screen. The light from the projector breaks the darkness: the students' first cinematic experience is about to begin. Among them are Iman and Eva, two teenage girls living in a remote mountain village in the Pankisi region of Georgia, an area traditionally inhabited by Muslims. In recent years, the number of people adhering to Wahhabism, the fundamentalist form of Islam, has grown in this area, and many men, including the girls' fathers, have gone off to fight in Syria. Iman and Eva become inspired to film their everyday lives, which begin to diverge dramatically.
Mari Gulbiani is a Georgian film director and screenplay writer. She studied philology at Tbilisi State University, and film directing at the Theatre and Film State University. From 2006 until 2010, she fine-tuned her experience at the Parisian film school, ‘Ateliers Varan’. In 2007, she founded the production company, Midifilm. She has worked in the program department of the CineDoc Tbilisi documentary film festival, and for CineDoc Young as a section coordinator.