This movie from Georgian writer-director Zara Urushadze had an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, losing out to Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida. It more than deserves its UK release now: a tremendous, old-fashioned anti-war film, by turns touching, moving and suspenseful. It’s set in 1992, in the post-Soviet Caucasus, where Georgians are fighting a war with secessionist Abkhazians, backed by Russia. Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) is an elderly ethnic Estonian who, with his friend Margus (Elmo Nüganen), is a tangerine farmer; they fear the fighting will destroy their entire crop. Disaster strikes, and Ivo finds himself having to offer tense hospitality to one wounded fighter from each side: Georgian Niko (Misha Meskhi) and Chechen mercenary Ahmed (Giorgi Nakhashidze) who has no great love for his Russian paymasters. Ivo’s house becomes their demilitarised zone, and Niko and Ahmed must suppress their hatred of each other while Ivo suppresses panic about all his unpicked tangerines going to waste. It is tremendous storytelling: engaging, intelligent, and with some lovely touches. When Ivo and Margus push a soldier’s van down a hill to hide it, they are disappointed it doesn’t burst into flames, like in the movies. “Cinema is a great big fraud,” says Ivo.
