Film

SMILING GEORGIA

Smiling Georgia begins with a broadcast to the nation: “In three days, Georgia is to make an important decision that will determine its future,” the country’s president orates from his podium, “the decision will impact every single town, city and village.” It's 2012, and the ruling party is running for reelection. Their campaign is set to focus on agriculture, employment and healthcare, most notably the promise of subsidized dental care for all. Across the country, medical practitioners have been removing rotten teeth with the guarantee that replacements will be made available in the coming months. The president said he wanted to make “Georgia smile,” then he lost.

Fast forward to the present day and many of those gaps are yet to be filled. Through a series of interviews in the village called “No Name”, Smiling Georgia looks back on that reckless promise and surveys the aftermath. There is the villager who remembers the long queues to get work done. There is the elderly woman who recalls having 15 teeth removed, all at once. One man still believes that the president had simply grown tired of having to hug toothless women.

Amongst them, we see images of village life: friends drinking tea; men singing traditional songs; a horse race; a wedding celebration—life, as always, going on. What emerges is a portrait of rural life and a people left solidly disillusioned with those in power.

Building toward the 2021 reelection of the Georgian Dream party, who toppled the ENM in 2012 and have been in power ever since, Smiling Georgia is also a film about the transience of power, the things politicians will say to keep it, and the people who are always left to pay the bill. It’s also a film of quiet defiance: with or without the politicians’ carelessness, these are a people who never forgot how to smile.