THE GEORGIAN LOVER

The plot: A small theatre in Berlin is planning a play about Georgia. Everything is going well until events come to a head. The Georgian leading actress disagrees with the script. A rift develops. A Georgian feast, a supra, is intended to bring about reconciliation.


The famous actress Anica Okrabishwili from the Tbilisi State Theatre is named Georgia's best actress for the second time. She then falls in love with a German and ends up in Berlin, in a small left-wing theatre. She soon becomes the driving force behind the troupe and ensures a full house.


When they plan a play about Anica's exciting life (her father is Georgian, her mother Russian), her political views clash with those of the rest of the troupe. Their life experiences are too different. Anica's experience of the Georgian-Russian war in 2008, her sympathy with the resistance against the current government on the one hand, and the experiences of the older actors from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War and the resistance against medium-range missiles in the 1980s on the other – they seem irreconcilable. In the middle of work, a rift occurs.


Anica breaks off a rehearsal and announces that she is leaving the theatre. The artistic director then organises a Georgian banquet. Will it be possible to bridge the seemingly irreconcilable differences? Will it be possible to keep the Georgian protagonist at the theatre?


The backdrop to the play is the problems faced by the new states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of which have large Russian minorities. A reasonable and peaceful solution to these problems is hampered by memories of many years of Russian foreign rule, but also by the continuing interest of the USA in removing these new states from Russia's sphere of influence and bringing them into NATO.