Eliso

Georgia, 1864. To seize their land, the tsarist administration uses Cossacks to drive Muslim Georgians from their homes and deport them to Ottoman territory. Meanwhile a Muslim girl and a Christian young man from the next village come to love each other. The film does not use the deportation as background; it shows directly the emptying of the village, the gathering of belongings and the setting out. The account gives the love as something that dissolves inside that forced migration. In Soviet silent cinema of 1929 it was remembered for its crowd scenes and its editing. Kira Andronikashvili plays the lead in Nikoloz Shengelaia’s ninety minute Georgian film, completed in 1929.