In Bloom

Director's Statement

The story is inspired by Nanaʼs personal memories of her youth in the troubled early 1990s in Georgia. We thought about the relation between young people and the time and cultural context in which they live. For us, this film was a journey into the past and present and a look into tomorrow. What can be considered part of a culture and where is the limit after which culture can no longer justify certain behaviours? As we grappled with these questions, we discovered that our actors, two 14-year-old girls, were open, unprejudiced and passionate and were quite perceptive despite their inexperience in life. A teenager is a teenager, no matter from which country he or she is. All teenagers share one characteristic: they search. Our characters search for their female identity in a context full of violence, love and revenge and question whether love can justify killing someone. The answer seems clear – of course, not. But what if you are confronted with this question and you only have fourteen years of life experience and live in a country steeped in chaos, anarchy and vigilante justice? Whom do you look up to? What values can help you survive? The universal human traits of the two girls and the passion and profundity of our characters and the actors who portray them - these are the pillars on which the film rests and which made it possible to bring this story to the big screen.