One of the great films of recent years in Georgia and the USSR, Molba was made in 1968 but held up for foreign showings for several years as the result of attacks from “official critics” who considered it lacked proper social consciousness. In 1975, it was featured at the London Film Festival, where Brian Baxter noted:
“It has been worth the wait, since it is - quite surely - a masterpiece and one of the most strikingly original and beautiful films ever made. It is a comparatively short work, shot in the deepest blacks and almost blinding whites, tightly compressing its complex tale of love, hate, and revenge. The screenplay is taken from an epic poem and this is overlaid onto the soundtrack with a fine musical score, and supplements the sparse dialogue. Abuladze has managed to convey the ‘epic' quality of the piece by superb use of the harsh landscapes and the integration of the characters within the surroundings. The central figure - Mindy - is a tragic, isolated figure at war with evil, in both specific and general terms. But what one finally remembers about the film is not the story, the adventure or the moments of tenderness, but the overwhelming images.... Abuladze's mysterious, haunting work is a triumph of mise-en-scène and confirms one's belief that Georgia and perhaps other Soviet Republics are producing some of the world's most astonishing films. Molba is based on two classic poems of Georgian literature by Vazh Pshavel.”