Homophobic groups say they will hold rally during Tbilisi International Film Festival
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Tuesday, December 3
Homophobic groups, Morality and Child Protection, say they will prevent the screening of LGBT films at the Tbilisi International Film Festival. They say that they will hold a rally at the Amirani cinema during the festival and will repeat it at every session.
As the organizers of the protests say, they were trying to buy all the tickets of the screening as they tried for And Then We Danced, but like before, every ticket was already sold.
As one of the organizers of the protest says, even if they won’t be able to go into the cinema, they will still "stand strong to try and show" what they have to say.
Guram Palavandishvili explains that this time they are protesting the screening of Comets by Georgian director Tamar Shavgulidze, and two foreign films. The film, which tells about the long-lasting love of two women, childhood friends, is also being screened at the Tbilisi Film Festival.
According to Palavandishvili, although they are protesting the film, they do not have a specific plan to disrupt the session, as it is now about a "small festival" and "doesn't concern the public interest." He added that because of these reasons, this time, other far-right groups won’t be standing with them.
"There will not be as many people protesting these films. Akin's film was still an insult to our tradition, dance, national dignity. These are small films and are just shown at the festival," said Palavandishvili.
Rallies were held in Tbilisi and Batumi in parallel with a screening of the Georgian-Swedish film, And Then We Danced. The rally in Tbilisi was organized by Levan Vasadze, a Russian-backed ultra-nationalistic businessman, Sandro Bregadze, the leader of the Nationalist organization Georgian March, and representatives of the homophobic group Guram Palavandishvili and Dimitri Lortkipanidze. They unsuccessfully tried to disrupt the sessions.
Despite the protest, the screening started at all the movie theaters on time and no sessions were interrupted. The film was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and was also selected as the Swedish entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
The film has already won the Grand Prix, the Best Film and Best Actor awards at the 10th Odessa International Film Festival in July. In August, Levan Gelbakhiani won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Actor at the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival and in October, the film won the Best Feature Film Award at the 2019 Iris Prize Festival.
