Gela Babluani was born in Tblissi in Georgia 26 years ago. He is the son of the director Temur Babluani (the director of four films including La Migration des Moineaux selected at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes in 1988 and the last, The Sun of the Wakeful, Silver Bear in Berlin in 1993) During his childhood Gela spent a lot of his time experiencing the frenzy of a period which was undergoing profound political and economic changes. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Georgia was plunged into freedom and chaos. Gela grew up during the civil war in a world in which corruption, fighting between rival clans, shoot-outs, soldiers and death became part of his everyday life. One day, his father, Temur, came home and found his elder daughter doing her homework. Outside in the street, gun shots were going off, but his daughter had become so used to this that she did not even look up. Temur sought to save his four children from becoming immune to violence by sending them to study in Paris. Gela was 17 at the time. He wrote a lot and developed a passion for cinema and the French language. Gela’s relationship with his father has remained a key influence in his cinematic approach. His references remain the great silent, black and white Soviet films he discovered in the movie theatre in Tblissi with his father. The force of the images and the power of the editing kept him riveted to his seat for hours on end. Formally, he has sought to recreate this same force in the images ever since his first short film, A Fleur de Peau, in 2002. In terms of the subject matter, he is more drawn to the violence that men exert over other men, the power games, destiny, and fate. Thus, in his feature film, 13 (TZAMETI), he portrays a world of brutes with lived-in faces who suddenly come across the innocence of a fragile young man. Downloads >>