★☆☆☆☆
Georgian director Buka Gvaberidze’s languid film explores the complex relationship between its two main characters over the course of a single day.
From its opening scene — filmed entirely via thermal imager showing the transition between waking up to and having morning sex all in real-time — it is clear Gvaberidze intended his film to be passive.
Almost every scene is shot via an extended take, showing in real time the stilted conversations between the two leads, who, minus the opening scene, seem dramatically uninterested in each other as a couple.
The main focus of the film, if it can even be described as such, appears to be the man’s attempts to translate his dream — that of a stone which had the capacity to hold all of his pain — into reality, through sculpture. There are hints of deeper messaging related to this — Is the breakdown of the relationship due to depression? Are there intercultural barriers at work, hinted at by the man’s dislike of speaking his partner’s language? — yet nothing is ever clearly answered, or even truly discussed.
Instead, the camera follows the two as they silently eat a leisurely breakfast; their awkward car journey from their more rural residence to downtown Tbilisi; a rehearsal at the Tbilisi Conservatoire that focuses on the man almost falling asleep on his chair — scenes of such length they try one’s patience.
Indeed, multiple times throughout a screening at the 26th Tbilisi International Film Festival, audience members left the cinema for presumed bathroom breaks or to buy snacks, knowing that to be gone for five or even 10 minutes at a time would not mean missing anything (though perhaps the fact they even came back at all does speak to some interest in the film among attendees).
Any momentum that potentially existed throughout the film dissipates entirely by the last third, as the pair split up and the man becomes locked outside the house, spending the night in the woods outside. As dawn lightens the sky and birdsong fills the air the following morning, the film ends. And the point of it all? Only the director can say.
Film details: Nothing Returns, Nothing Is Repeated, Everything Is Real (2025), directed by Buka Gvaberidze, premiered at the 26th Tbilisi International Film Festival on 3 December 2025. It is available to stream on Cavea+.
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