Placekeepers

Two main threads led me to this community in Tusheti. When I was 8, in the 1990s, my mother, as a way to heal after her divorce, began hosting exchange students from across the former Soviet Union. This opened a door to a world that had been largely inaccessible to me in America — a society grappling with the recent end of 50 years of Soviet rule. Over time, my interest in this region deepened, leading me to travel to various parts of the post-Soviet world.

In the U.S., stories about these countries often focus on war and despair, portraying the people as a monolithic bloc. But what I found was a rich tapestry of cultures, filled with humor, warmth, and a deep sense of irony. I’m continuously fascinated by how the remnants of the Soviet Union persist in shaping reality today. In Tusheti, this legacy is palpable in unexpected ways — locals who remember the Soviet era often perceive themselves as living in the shadow of a once more prosperous society, one that had schools, electricity, and provisions to live year-round in the highlands. The fall of the Soviet Union, for many, marked the beginning of the downfall of their tightly knit community in Tusheti.

The second thread is more personal. My grandfather used to lead our extended family on two-week backpacking trips into the most remote parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Every night, we gathered around a fire to dance, share food, and sing old family songs. The isolation of the mountains fostered a sense of community and intergenerational sharing that I’ve rarely experienced elsewhere. This longing for community — and the way mountain ranges can isolate yet also preserve traditions lost elsewhere — has stayed with me throughout my life.

This film is an intimate collaboration between myself and my Georgian collaborator, Anna R. Japaridze. In Tusheti, we were a team of two — Anna was the Director of Photography and I ran production sound; Anna also edited the film and I directed and produced it. As documentarians, we are drawn to pockets of community and idiosyncrasy that remain vibrant in the present age of mass movement and capitalist globalization. These are not just relics of a prior world, mirages from an ‘ancient’, ‘timeless’ realm — they are of this time, and they exist as reminders that we can live in a multiplicity of ways; that we can imagine a future that draws on these alternative modes of life. Tusheti is one such place.

Yet, Tusheti is transforming. As village elders pass on, local youth migrate in pursuit of greater economic stability. The memory of older ways of life — fostered over centuries and passed down through oral tradition — is at risk. While these issues play out in the unique prism of Tusheti, they are of striking global relevance. Rural depopulation is occurring worldwide, and the increasing concentration of people in cities is leading many of us towards increasingly atomized lives — divorced from our heritage, estranged from our neighbors, and disconnected from the natural world.