Let us Flow

For me, the Tush people stand out for their dedication to their traditional way of life which is influenced by extreme weather conditions as much as by the symbolic order: Gods are cherished and respected, while the Tush language reflects their struggle for survival. Moreover, Tusheti shares its borders, as well as the mountain customs and traditions with Dagestan - an independent mountain nation, swallowed up by the Russian federation.

In Tusheti, life has remained largely unchanged since medieval times until few years ago, when the government introduced free wifi access in the villages, where previously one had to walk for 10 km to make a phone call. The desires of the young Tushetians are shifting rapidly, and nowhere else is the conflict of desires more pronounced than during the region's annual celebration 'Atengenoba', with young Tushetians looking more and more like young people anywhere else, ditching their traditional dress for Normcore.
Gender and identity are at the centre of this land of contradictions, which resists simple binaries and complicates Western concepts around society and the individual. While the region's pre-Christian shrines are still only accessible to men, suggesting an inflexible patriarchy, Tush women - as well-versed in horse riding as in singing and dancing - fully participate in impromptu local elections of village elders, who govern their laws.
I am interested in linguistic parallels between Tushetian quotidian and filmmaking jargon, between hunting and shooting: Tushetians believe that odd years are governed by the Goddess Dali and even years are St George’s years. My film follows this structure as its two parts are shot in 2021 and 2022 respectively: there is more distance in the second part, it was more difficult to shoot (‘to hunt’) as a woman filmmaker.
As the film progresses, it becomes a film about distance: the twenty meter distance the Tushetian women have to observe from their shrines, the distance between me and my protagonists, between languages and translation. Filmmakers constantly talk about distance, it permeates the filmmaking language: we say ‘depth of field’ and ‘focusing distance’, we are careful not to film too close, we say the lens is ‘breathing’ when the focus shifts slightly. I leave those instances in my film in order to designate another body - my body, and by extension, the viewer’s body. The parallels between me and the Tush become more apparent: my predicament of living between two countries and two tongues is shared by the Tush, who migrate to low-lying plains every winter and have to grapple with a Georgian which is markedly different to their own dialect.