Chai Khana

As a result of the second Karabakh war, a village should be ceded to Azerbaijan since a new highway is built through the Lachin corridor. The family of Narine, like many other Armenian families, needs to find a new place.

The area of the abandoned parliament building in Kutaisi is an equal attraction and source of inspiration for artists and political elites of different eras. A young filmmaker studies the memory of this spot with his handheld camera, led by members of the band Skazz, and tries to reflect the facade of a building standing in the swamp.

21-year-old Marisha works the night shift at a hotel full of Russian tourists to earn money for her studies. When she arrives in Tbilisi after two years of online classes, Marisha struggles to find a place to live, due to the influx of Russians escaping mobilization.

In Kutaisi, revived with footage of the 90s, the characteristic mood for Georgia's transition period is seen everywhere: family conversations, festive parties, artistic protests, public events, TV shows, and the city streets. These little stories reflect the confusion caused by the new reality, fear of an uncertain future, material hardship, and the anxious everyday life of the city. These scenes seem to answer the questions arising in the process of adjusting to the new way of life. All issues, which seemed particularly complex at that time, are now becoming simple and clear from today's perspective.

The world has become akin to an abandoned video game: frozen and endless. State of Emergency wants to recreate this strange video-game reality. The film is an attempt to save a place in time: to describe it, and to remember it. Our current present — our own state of emergency, the Covid-19 pandemic — began more than a year ago, and no one knows how long it will last. The main markers of this new reality are isolation and distance. In the film, we see a virtual city has become like time itself, a labyrinth that is endless and uncertain. Meanwhile, lines from a diary collect the disparate thoughts accumulated over the course of a month.

Through the creative use of archival footage, documentary filmmaker Maka Gogaladze tells a story of her family – from her birth till the present day, intertwined with the turbulent history of Georgia over the last 30 years.