"In her childhood, Maka attended her hated piano lessons in tears. When she asks her mother about it, she is told that this torment is extremely important for discipline. The conversation prompts an examination of whether current pedagogical routine in Georgia has strayed far from such a concept of education.

A music school in which brutal emotional and verbal pressure is part of the curriculum; a ballet school where little girls must endure intense pain while stretching; a primary school class where even the most passionate recitation of a patriotic poem about the heroes of the motherland is cause for criticism. We plunge into a somewhat surreal, at times hilariously rigid world, reminiscent of a Palaeolithic dinosaur desperately trying to save itself in the present day.

“Steel is tempered by fire,” says the mother. Her words express the burden of responsibility for her beloved daughter and convey many warm, previously unspoken feelings. “But I am a human being first,” Maka replies. The loving daughter insists that the idea of humanity based on authoritarian power structures must be overcome, because it is still reproduced in the most private relationships, including those between parents and children." - Vika Leshenko, DOK Leipzig

Dir. Maka Gogaladze | 87min | 2024 | Georgia

"For a nation that has undergone invasion numerous times, it is perhaps understandable that Georgia would place such an emphasis on collectivism. Under pressure to uphold a homogenous national identity, however, childlike wonder and innocence is in danger of being lost permanently." - Guardian

"Through a composition of the frame that is as strict as the education it depicts, filmmaker Maka Gogaladze highlights the rigidity of constraint, while subverting it through caustic humour. An amusing, salutary filmic game that allows the director to break away from the influence of a power which had discreetly insinuated itself between her and her mother" - Visions du Reel

"Maka Gogaladze lays bare the soul of her Georgian nation. What at first appears to be an ego-documentary turns out to be a beautiful portrait of the Georgian mentality and its cultural richness" - Business Doc Europe

"throws sideway glances at the power of capitalism, doubting to a degree that liberalism should be allowed to shape today’s postcolonial world. In that sense, the film captures what it means to be living in contradiction, or to live at the crossroads of modernity and the past" - East European Film Bulletin

"achieves cinematic excellence by capturing the atmosphere of a reconstructed environment that unites past and present through a poetic mise-en-scène" - Cineuropa