Andy Garcia has stepped into the shoes of Georgia's maverick president, Mikheil Saakashvili, for a Hollywood thriller set against the backdrop of the 2008 conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic.
Directed by Die Hard 2's Renny Harlin, the picture began shooting at the weekend on location in Georgia. It is billed as an anti-war film about an American journalist and his cameraman who get caught in the crossfire and struggle with their duty to be impartial.
Garcia, whose credits include The Godfather: Part III and Ocean's Eleven, arrived in Georgia on Sunday as shooting moved from the former Russian-held town of Gori to the capital, Tbilisi. Harlin says the film – provisionally entitled Georgia – will be impartial, even though Papuna Davitaia, an MP from Saakashvili's ruling United National Movement, is one of the producers on the project.
"I've waited a long time to find something with substance and reality," Harlin said in August. "I want to make a film that says something about the human condition, and even if only a few people see this and feel its impact and its anti-war message, then I will have done something that's important and I will be proud of it."
"Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing," executive producer Michael Flannigan told Georgian television. "We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film."
Saakashvili, who has embraced relations with the west to Russia's chagrin, was blamed for triggering the 2008 conflict by launching an assault on pro-Russian South Ossetia following a period of frequent border clashes and rising tension with Moscow. However, a European Union report released last month concluded that Russia's retaliation, which saw it invade its neighbour and occupy the territory, violated international law.
Some 850 people died during the conflict and more than 100,000 fled their homes as the Russian military carried out air strikes and sent tanks deep into Georgia.
Meanwhile, Serbian film-maker Emir Kusturica revealed yesterday that he had rejected a Russian offer to direct a separate film about the war. "I didn't accept it because I have a binding contract for the next four years," he told Reuters.
