Vakhtanguri

Valeriu Adimei
Belgium / Romania
16’ 56"

Mindia and Joy meet one night in Tbilisi and start a long distance relationship, even if being queer is dangerous  in Georgia. The two dream of a safer place and start a small vintage clothes business to save up. Soon, living in Georgia becomes exhausting, so they flee to Belgium to seek asylum.

In Vakhtanguri, his very first film, Valeriu Adimei directs a reenactment of the story of queer love and resistance lived by his friends, Mindia and Joy, two young Georgians who emigrated in Belgium. As such, in a documentary make-believe about the self, their presence in front of the camera sometimes illustrates certain important events, and other times transforms into something else, a state of grace fundamental to cinema, caught in between past and present, fictional and non-fictional — a sentimental history reenacted speculatively.  One yesterday night, at the cruising spot from the edge of a forest, two men watch each other with desire and hesitation – lovers playing strangers, they unlikely embrace each other, holding, for a moment outside the illusion, their entire open history. (Călin Boto)

Screening date and location

September 27th, 6:30 PM, Cinemateca Eforie

Tickets

Valeriu Adimei

Valeriu Adimei graduated from the Screenwriting and Filmology department of the UNATC National University of Film and Theatre in Bucharest with a BA thesis on reclaiming 1970s sapphic vampire narratives. In 2022 he/they was/were part of the organizing team for the One World Romania Documentary Film Festival, and in 2021 he/they participated in the summer camp organized by the queer film festival Art200, where he/they made an experimental short film, The More My Wires Loosen Up, with two other colleagues. During his/their final year of undergraduate studies he/they was/were on an Erasmus scholarship at LUCA School of Arts Brussels, with an academic focus on filmmaking. This year resulted in the conception and direction of his/their first solo short film, Vakhtanguri.



  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • Cast: Mindia Buchukuri, Joy Arusia
  • Director: Valeriu Adimei
  • Assistant director: Kasper Lerno, Emma Korver
  • DOP: Mieke De Nys
  • Assistant operator: Arthur Zwartjes
  • Sound: Lisa Debaille, Eloise David
  • Studio Sound: Quinten Hazebroek
  • Sound Editor: Octavian Albu
  • Extras: Jonas, Julie Vanlook, Luis Yary, Nikol Ozzi, Pavel Tikhomirov, Simon Dejean
  • Produced by: LUCA School of Arts Bruxelles

Screens

National Competition 2

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Vakhtanguri

Valeriu Adimei | Duration 16’ 56"

Mindia and Joy meet one night in Tbilisi and start a long distance relationship, even if being queer is dangerous in Georgia. The two dream of a safer place and start a small vintage clothes business to save up. Soon, living in Georgia becomes exhausting, so they flee to Belgium to seek asylum.

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Meniu