ON THE WAY HOME: A Film Review
by Karen Pecota

Giorgi Kvelidze | United States \\ 2024

Tbilisi-based filmmaker, Giorgi Kvelidze, moved to New York in 2015 to pursue ad career in filmmaking, after studying business and economics at Tbilisi State University.

Here is the background Kvelidze, along with his film team, share leading up to the formulation of his first feature documentary ON THE WAY HOME: “In 1991, the nation of Georgia gained it’s independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In an attempt to maintain influence, Russia provoked conflicts in autonomous republics within several post-Soviet states.”

Adding, “This strategy triggered the 1992-1993 war in Abkhazia, Georgia, (known as the Abkhazia-Georgian conflict) an autonomous republic in the northwestern Georgia. The ensuing aggressions by Russia through proxy forces escalate into violence and ethnic cleansing uprising displacing 200,000 ethnic Georgians within their own country.” Continuing, “Many of these people took refuge in the abandoned Soviet resort area in the town of Tskaltubo, in western Georgia.”

This resort was the home of various sanitariums once beautifully advertised as a place of refuge for the sick to get well. The refugees knew it all too well in days past, as well as in the current state as a place of horrific deprivation; but to simply to have a roof over their heads it became a location that gave them shelter when forced to travel twenty days to the unsightly, rundown environment.

Kvelidze uses archival film footage of their plight, leaving everything behind to find refuge. It’s a sorrowful road to travel most don’t understand how they stayed alive.

Kvelidze shares the stories of four refugees: Iamze age eighty-one, Nikusha age 12, KHATUNA age fifty-six, and GIORGI age twenty-seven. Their narratives present diverse walks of life, ages and journeys as they seek out a hope for their way back home. Each story is tragic but as Iamze says, that patience for everything has been her virtue, “If you have nothing, you will still survive.”

Their incredible resilience is captured in Kvelidze’s portrayal of ON THE WAY HOME and his project is a love letter to all who suffer and wait patiently for a life of freedom. And, believe that it can be done.