The Republic of Georgia, post-Soviet era and cratered by civil strife, was a dangerous place for anyone in the early 1990s, let alone two petite 14-year-old girls. Eka (Lika Babluani) and Natia (Mariam Bokeria) get by in the decrepit world of Tbilisi, mostly by pretending there’s nothing wrong in the city. But every man they encounter, from bald old-timer to feral young boy, seems potentially dangerous.
Eka is the soulful-eyed, “sensitive” friend, and Natia is the beautiful, “rebellious” one. Eka’s mother works and her father is in prison. Natia’s father knocks her mother around when he’s had too much to drink.
Where the two directors, Georgia’s Nana Ekvtimishvili and Germany’s Simon Gross, excel most is in the performances they capture from the two leads. Both girls are jittery, impulsive bundles of emotion, jerking back and forth between childhood and maturity. At a wedding, Babluani performs a traditional dance and seems to be gaining a woman’s assurance with each gesture.
The movie deals out scenes one at a time without — at first — assembling anything. Then a quiet romance for Natia with the sole nice boy in Tbilisi sets off a chain of events, and the through line becomes clear. In terms of its outlook for young girls in Georgia, the movie title might as well be “Buried Alive.”