TEAR GAS

A word from the selection committee :

Tear Gas, the title itself speaks volumes. While French opts for the almost clinical term of – literally -- “lacrymogenic gas”, the English expression conveys the violence of the device more directly; a technology that weaponizes tears and turns the body into the first site of repression. Against this geography of constraint, Georgian filmmaker Uta Beria sets a horizon of resistance; as the longest sequence of the film – over half of its running time – and undoubtedly the most powerful and distinctive, unfolds amid the real-life demonstrations against Russian occupation in Tbilisi. The violence of the occupation is made manifest in the landscape of the opening sequence: a forest divided in two by a wall of barbed wire, along which the residents gather, and a sign forbidding any trespassing (though some of them try nonetheless, in the only hope of catching a glance of what was once their homes). Poised at the threshold of images that document and record the reality of a people and images shaped by fiction (at times verging on abstraction) the film traces the singular story of Elena, a sixteen-year-old teenage girl growing up in a refugee village. Through her eyes, we witness events unfold, following her movements and her observations, through the movements of the crowd and her encounters (which will even lead her to a romantic crusade), Tear Gas composes a sensory, intimate and radical score of resistance. 

Rose Hirgorom 

Traduction : Aurore Kahan