Keep Smiling

Ten women enter a beauty contest for mothers with more than three children; seven of them come from the poorest part of the country. The winner will be given an apartment and twenty five thousand dollars, so the contest is not an entertainment but a way out. The women rehearse, size one another up, form alliances and break them. The film does not make fools of them and does not directly accuse the contest either; it shows what people are willing to do when the prize is that large. The account stays backstage and films the waiting room rather than the show. Poverty here is not background but the reason for the decisions. Ia Sukhitashvili plays the lead in Rusudan Chkonia’s ninety one minute Georgian film, completed in 2013.