Biografia
Tengiz Abuladze (Georgian: თენგიზ აბულაძე; 31 January 1924 – 6 March 1994) was a Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre educator, and People's Artist of the USSR. He is considered one of the finest Soviet filmmakers.
Abuladze studied theatre direction from 1943 to 1946 at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, and later studied filmmaking at VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography) in Moscow. He graduated from VGIK in 1952 and joined Gruziya-film (Georgia Film Studios) as a director in 1953. In 1980, he was honored with the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
His debut film, Magdana's Donkey (1956), co-directed with Rezo Chkheidze, received the "Best Fiction Short" award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. He is best known for his film trilogy: The Plea (The Supplication) (1968), The Wishing Tree (1977), and Repentance (1984, released in 1987). This trilogy earned him the Lenin Prize in 1988 and the inaugural Nika Award for Best Picture. Repentance also won the Special Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. That same year, he served as a jury member at the 15th Moscow International Film Festival.
Abuladze gained significant recognition during the perestroika era in the Soviet Union when his previously banned film Repentance, a powerful critique of Stalinist terror, was released in 1986.
Repentance centers on the death of an old dictator, Varlam Aravidze, and a woman's, Ketevan Barateli's, refusal to leave his corpse undisturbed. She repeatedly exhumes the body, and during the trial, exposes the hidden and forbidden truths of the past. Aravidze symbolically represents figures such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin, but most notably reflects Stalin's fellow Georgian, Lavrentiy Beria.
