English Teacher and Bakhmaro 2050

Georgia’s movement to teach English to schoolchildren is the backdrop for this beautifully observed documentary about an English teacher, Bradley Nelson from South Africa, and his experiences in a remote Georgian village, Sajijao. There he encounters both the warmth of the local community, and some resistance to the “linguistic revolution” as a national initiative. A finely drawn portrait of a critical moment in Georgia’s development as an independent nation in the post-Soviet era.

Before construction begins on a major housing complex in Bakhmaro, a resort town in western Georgia that travelers visit for the special healing properties of the air, filmmaker Anka Gujabidze observes life as it is. Employing superimpositions and dissolves, this documentary portrait ruminates on the changes that will come with construction and what will be lost.