Real and Surreal in the First Anti-Soviet Film: Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance

Lela TSIPHURIA

Abstract: Tengiz Abuladze’s (1924-1994) film Repentance (1984) is still regarded as one of the most anti-Soviet films produced within the former Soviet Union. While Soviet censorship was still harsh in the years when the film was made, it was the first, not only in Georgia but in the whole USSR, to openly and critically ad­dress the issues of Soviet totalitarianism and the Great Purge.

The article suggests viewing the film from multiple angles, recalling the facts and circumstances that affected its production, including political support and/or cen­sorship, fatalities, and artistic difficulties. The article demonstrates how the film director, aiming to reconstruct and reflect on the real history of one of the most brutal periods of the recent past, seeks artistic forms and approaches that will re­present reality also through surreal and phantasmagorical scenes. The decision to blend the aesthetic elements of realism and surrealism in the film can be seen as an emphasis on the dual nature of Soviet history: it was real, yet so unbelievably bru­tal and illogical that it acquired surreal features. This fusion made the story so­mewhat eclectic but allowed us to see it as timeless, a struggle between good and evil. Repentance was precisely the first cinematic victory in the battle against the ‘empire of evil’.

Keywords: Anti-Soviet, film, Abuladze, brutal, phantasmagorical.

Introduction

Tengiz Abuladze’s (1924-1994) film Repentance (1984) is still regarded as one of the most anti-Soviet films produced within the former Soviet Union. While Soviet censorship was still harsh in the years when the film was made, it was the first, not only in Georgia but in the whole USSR, to openly and critically address the issues of Soviet totalitari­anism and the Great Purge. A more intense process of revealing the tabo­oed moments of Soviet history and reflecting on suppressed, unrepresen­ted collective traumas related to them began in Georgian culture during the Perestroika (1985-1991) and, even more strongly, after the fall of the USSR in 1991, when Soviet ideolo­gical censorship was cancelled, and the dark side of Soviet history had to be understood. A large body of litera­ry texts, films, public essays, and research works began to appear in Georgia, aiming to rethink Soviet reality. A little later, the independent Georgian state banned Soviet sym­bols (by law in 2011) and established the Museum of Soviet Occupation (2006) to declare its stance on the Soviet past. However, Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance remains un­surpassed in Georgia and in former Soviet countries for both the sharpness of its civic position and its artistic quality.

Soviet Politics as a Supporter and/or Censor

At the beginning of the 1980s, la­belled by Soviet propaganda as the period of ‘developed Socialism’, it would seem still very early to openly address such a ruthless and tabooed moment of Soviet history as the Great Purge. However, Georgian lite­rature and film have been pushing the limits of representation for a couple of decades. In the background of the­se achievements, Tengiz Abuladze decided to speak out about the issues that, until then, had only been hinted at by Georgian writers, theatre direc­tors, and film directors.

The film was made with the agre­ement of Eduard Shevardnadze (1928-2014), then the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. He, apparently, understood very well what influence a work of art – and most of all, a film – can have on so­ciety. From the very beginning of his party career, Shevardnadze esta­blished relations with Georgian cultu­ral figures, supporting their projects within the limitations imposed by the Soviet centre, thereby building his own social capital. At that time, the young generation of Georgian film-makers indeed benefited from this attitude. Among them was young director Rezo Chkheidze (1926-2015), who was directing The Soldi­er’s Father (1964) at Georgian Film [Kartuli Filmi, the only state-owned film studio in Georgian SSR], and Shevardnadze, then not a high-ranking party official, the head of the Tbilisi district where the film studio was located, personally took on the role of patron. Although the theme of the Great Patriotic War (as World War II was known in official Soviet discourse) was a high priority for Soviet propaganda, there were few Georgian films about it. The Soldi­er’s Father turned out to be an award-winning film, acclaimed thro­ughout the USSR. At the award ce­remony in Moscow, Rezo Chkheidze spoke of the contribution of young party official Eduard Shevardnadze, and this became the beginning of Shevardnadze’s career ascent. In the early 1980s, already serving as the head of the Georgian SSR, or the First Secretary of the Central Com­mittee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Shevardnadze began to hu­manise his image, also by supporting various cultural initiatives and se­eking contacts with Georgian cultural figures. He sought to make three ma­jor films – the first portraying the patriotically minded and dedicated Georgian party official, whose proto­type would be himself (the film Earth, This Is Your Son (1980), di­rected by Rezo Chkheidze); the se­cond about the Great Purge – Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance; and the third, unrealised, a film about the most powerful medieval Georgian King David the Builder (1073-1125). The film scholar Giorgi Gvakharia wrote: “We should think that Shevardnadze knew — Repentance would help his rise as a politician… He felt what would happen in the country, so he found the film suppor­tive of his goals – that after the pre­miere, Georgian society would men­tion him as a co-author of Repentan­ce, as well as ‘Perestroika,’ and credit him for the collapse of the Commu­nist system. In that sense, Georgia’s then First Secretary of the Central Committee, who by the time of the premiere of Repentance was already the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, was ahead of his time… unli­ke his colleagues, who from the be­ginning perceived Repentance as an anti‑Soviet film”¹.

Despite Shevardnadze’s patrona­ge, Tengiz Abuladze was aware of the possibility that the film might never appear on screens, or that he and the production team might even be sent to the “den of the white bears,” that is, to prison in Siberia. He often joked about this during the production process. Yet there was some truth in the joke. It is a known fact that the head of the Georgian KGB, Aleksi Inauri (1908-1993), reported to Moscow that Abuladze was making an anti‑Soviet film. He even demanded the destruction of the filmed material. This happened after the dramatic and controversial events, the attempt of a small group of young Georgians to escape the USSR by aircraft hijacking (18-19 November 1983). After the challenge failed, the hijackers were imprisoned and soon executed. Gega Kobakhidze (1961-1984), a young actor initially playing the role of Tornike Aravidze, was among them. The premises of his house were searched, and the screen­play of the film was seized. Although many episodes of Tornike Aravidze’s parts in Gega Kobakhidze’s perfor­mance had already been filmed, he was, of course, unable to continue with the role. The young actor was outstanding in this role: great spiritu­al strength emanated from his pre­sence; he was seen as a descendant of the Aravidzes, who was ready to take moral responsibility for the brutalities committed by fathers and grandfa­thers. It must be said that the film would have been entirely different with the participation of Gega Kobakhidze.

Preparing the Story to Tell

Private consultations concluded with an agreement on the themes of the films. There were many stories describing the cruelty of the repressi­ons of the Purge. Tengiz Abuladze, together with the second director and co-author of the screenplay, Nana Janelidze (b. 1955), researched in detail the biographies of outstanding repressed figures of the Georgian intelligentsia — “Nana Janelidze met repressed people (or their relatives) and heard their stories. Nika Agiashvili, Nita Tabidze, Ketevan Javakhishvili, Lali Akhmeteli, Nino Uchaneshvili … — these are just a few of the people on whose personal histories this brilliant film was wo­ven”². It should be noted that, in ad­dition to meeting with descendants of the repressed, during the preparatory period, the film’s production team studied the press, literature, and pos­ters of that time in detail. As an assis­tant of director,  film’s crew member, I was personally responsible for this part.

The main intrigue, on which the film’s plot is built, is exhuming the corpse from its grave. This is the axis, the “intellectual skewer” of the film, as Tengiz Abuladze himself called it. “The film is based on a true story that happened in one of the vil­lages in the Samegrelo region. Tengiz Abuladze was told this by his close friend Akaki Bakradze [literary scholar,1928-1999]: writer Nodar Tsuleiskiri [1932-2015] has an inte­resting idea, and was told how a yo­ung man dug up the corpse of a de­ceased prosecutor, and placed it, wat­ching over it, by the gate of the mo­urner. The young man’s father was an accountant. One KGB man made advances to his mother, sent his father into exile to the Gulag, and forced the mother into becoming his mistress. The insulted woman com­mitted suicide. The boy grew up, and the KGB officer became a distingu­ished prosecutor; when he died, the young man took revenge by digging him up”³. The real story seemed mo­re personal, but in the end, everything still came to the ugliness of the Sovi­et system — the use of power for evil goals, the Gulag, suicide, and exhu­mation of the dead. In Abuladze’s film, unlike the real story, an impres­sive, generalised image of evil is cre­ated, in the form of the Aravidze fa­mily, which opposes and destroys all that is good and valuable, whether it be a historic medieval Georgian church or notable members of socie­ty. In the film, the Soviet official Varlam Aravidze is the one who does not deserve to be buried.

The film’s original title was Me­mory. The title of the novel by Nodar Tsuleiskiri was Hyenas [Aptrebi] (1985) and was considered as one version for the film’s title. The title Repentance belongs to the second director [now this position is called the first assistant] of the film, Neli Kutateladze. “The film’s vision is Orwellian, Varlam’s power is based on absurdity and ambiguity. The sur­realism of his world is nothing other than the ambiguity of 1984”.⁴

Representing the Real, yet Surreal Soviet History

Together with the stories of their victims, the film tells the story of three generations of the Aravidze family: the grandfather, Varlam Ara­vidze, is the Soviet party official, responsible in Georgia for the exile and execution of innocent sufferers of the Great Purge – the most brutal repressions of the Soviet Stalinist totalitarian regime performed in 1936-1938 all over the Soviet state; his son, Abel Aravidze, is a respected and quite influential member of the Soviet, post-Stalin Georgian society, who – like the whole society – never questioned the deeds of his father and his generation, and continued their living in an atmosphere of Soviet false values; the grandson, Tornike Aravidze, is a young men who was raised in complete ignorance about the recent past, but, when encoun­tered with the story of the victims of the purge, desperately tries to take the responsibility critically, and, eventually, takes his own life. When generalized, Varlam Aravidze’s character can be related to any dicta­tor, foremostly, the central figure of Soviet totalitarianism, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Still, Varlam also car­ries clear features of Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953), Georgia’s Communist leader and a hangman, personally responsible for the deaths and exiles of thousands of Georgians during the Purge⁵.

In the Georgian cinematography of the 1980s, as well as in literature and theatre, allegorical audio-visual storytelling was firmly established. The existence of a double layer in literature and film was obviously de­termined by Soviet censorship. In the screenplay of Repentance, based on a true story, the protagonist was inten­ded to be a man seeking vengeance. During the preparatory period for filming, Tengiz Abuladze sought a form for the film — one that would convey the true story, but also allow for alternative interpretations and readings in case of necessity. Theatre director Robert Sturua (b. 1938) wri­tes about Repentance: “The union of grotesque and the theatrical is bro­ught to its maximum. It isn’t easy to turn into an object of art that which is the theme of this film… I think Abuladze managed to unite an autho­rial, poetic cinema with real life, so that he did not entirely cross over to the other side. I look at life already through his eyes — this is his world, moreover, transferred into a somew­hat poetic world by force. Through metaphors and strange comparisons, one can see psychological drama, lyrical scenes, farce, and grotesque elements. Everything was blended and never departed from real life”⁶.

The decision to blend the aesthe­tic elements of realism and surrea­lism in the film can be seen as an emphasis on the dual nature of Soviet history: it was real, yet so unbelie­vably brutal and illogical that it ac­quired surreal features.

The search for a surrealistic form began with a completely realistic al­teration – the vengeance-seeking pro­tagonist, Ketevan Baratelli, a da­ughter of the artist and the victim of the Purge, Sandro Barateli, was por­trayed as an eccentric confectioner; she learns the news of Varlam Aravidze’s death through a newspa­per announcement read by the cha­racter of the driver, played by Geor­gian film director Rezo Esadze (1934-2020); throughout that episo­de, he ravenously eats the creamy models of the churches placed on top of the cakes baked by Ketevan. It is here that two connotative layers inte­ract — the real and the phantasmago­rical. The beginning and the finale of the film are built on the principle of a classical tragedy. The whole course of the film can be taken on one hand as a true story and on the other as Ketevan Barateli’s fantasy. The tra­gedy that unfolds could be taken as a dream. Thus, the film, a fusion of real and phantasmagorical, was born. Gogi Mikeladze (B. 1946), the film’s production designer, has a boundless imagination, inventiveness, and taste, which permitted Tengiz Abuladze to unite apparently incompatible details in a single whole. One of the episo­des of the film depicts iron-armoured knights, some on horseback and so­me in vintage Mercedes cabriolets, searching for artist Sandro Barateli (Edisher Giorgobiani, b. 1955) buried alive; his wife Nino (Ketevan Abuladze, b. 1959) is also desperate­ly looking for him; a white‑shirted peasant turns out to be a betrayer; victorious Varlam Aravidze (Avtandil Makharadze, 1943-1987) sings an aria of Mephistopheles; and all these appear to be Nino’s dream. In a dream, you know, everything is compatible.

The film’s cinematographer, Mikhail Agranovich, wrote: “A good director is someone who has idiotic ideas come to his head. Ideas that seem ridiculous to a discerning and rational person. Then it turns out the film stands precisely on that. That is, a masterpiece is often founded on idiotic ideas… To this day, I still dis­like the white grand piano episode in Repentance. But in the end, such ideas win and the films are built on them, just like Fellini’s pictures, which are built on icons and archety­pes. Tengiz had only these types of ideas come into his head. I recall a group of young people on set who were constantly carving out somet­hing new, inventing. And Tengiz col­lected the most exact ideas from them. As it turns out, it is very exact. Yet Repentance is characterised by a certain eclecticism, unlike the prece­ding two films, which are stylistically amazingly precise and cohesive”⁷.

The Director and the Crew

Tengiz Abuladze’s special attitu­de toward the creative group’s mem­bers is also noteworthy: he always took every valuable idea into acco­unt. He used to say “our film” and never referred to it as “mine.” By this, the director constantly emphasi­sed the importance of every role in the filmmaking process. It must be said that the creative group was inde­ed extremely devoted throughout the film‑making process. I was fortunate to be part of the film crew, as the di­rector’s assistant, alongside young members, including future film direc­tors Zaza Khalvashi (1957-2020) and Paata Milorava (1959-2014), as well as Gocha Abashidze, Tzitsi Jervalidze, and others.

After the director had to replace Gega Kobakhidze, the role of Tornike Aravidze was given to young Merab Ninidze (b. 1965), then still a student of the Institute of Theatre and Film, Tbilisi, who grew into one of today’s most successful and interna­tionally established Georgian actors. He recalls getting into Repentance as follows: “It is strange that my story, and the beginning of the film, resem­ble each other — I too read in a new­spaper about the audition for the role of Tornike. The newspaper reported that, for certain reasons, director Tengiz Abuladze had to replace the actor mid-way through filming and is now announcing a competition to select a new actor. That was it, wit­hout any additional information or explanation of reasons. Very soon, Abuladze’s assistants came to the Institute to find candidates for the role. At that time, I was already a second-year student. Nino Tarkhan‑ Mouravi suggested to Malkhaz Aslamazishvili and Lela Tsiphuria that I also go through audi­tions. In­deed, I was called and I went”⁸.

Mikhail Agranovich was the third cinematographer whom Tengiz Abuladze hired for the film. The fil­ming was started by Giorgi Gersamia (b. 1939). Unfortunately, the material shot with an old Soviet camera, Konvas, due to its insufficiency, was techni­cally flawed. Solomon Shengelia, a cameraman from Batumi with an exciting vision, replaced Gersamia. Many shots he filmed made it into the film: the rally scene; Varlam Aravidze’s madness scene, when, in a white shirt, in the closed circle of the bunker, he attempts to eclipse the sun; the dance of Varlam’s daughter-in-law (Ia Ninidze, b. 1960) around Varlam’s coffin, and others. Solomon Shengelia, as a cameraman for film chronicles, was most successful whi­le filming outdoors, where he did not use artificial lighting. While interiors, where setting up lighting was crucial, were an unconquerable difficulty. For consultation, Tengiz Abuladze bro­ught two cinematographers, Lomer Akhvlediani and Alexander (Kukuri) Gvasalia, to Batumi, as a significant part of the film was shot there. Tengiz Abuladze had worked with Lomer Akhvlediani (1934-2022) on the previous, award-winning film The Wishing Tree (1977) and was eager to cooperate with him again on Re­pentance. Still, Lomer Akhvlediani was busy making Rezo Chkheidze’s film from Shevardnadze’s project Earth, This Is Your Son. Another candidate for the role of cinemato­grapher was Alexander Antipenko (b. 1938), with whom Abuladze had co­operated on his film The Plea (1967), but he was busy with another film too. Finally, Mikhail Agranovich arrived from Moscow with the dream film camera, a reflex, and the shootings continued with Kodak as well. It can be said that due to these conse­quences, the tragic fate of Gega Kobakhidze, and technical problems, filming was done virtually three ti­mes.

Avtandil (Avto) Makharadze, the actor playing the roles of both Varlam and Abel Aravidze, wrote: “Tengiz often repeated one phrase – ‘art is creation of harmony from cha­os.’ Why did he say that? Because his creation was that, from chaos he created harmony. He could take from a hundred words the one word that was most important for him. Tengiz took only what was necessary for his particular work – not just for the film, but even for a single scene or a single frame. Only he did this with astonis­hing lightness, and you would not guess how many things he was inte­rested in things people told him or those happening around him”⁹.

The Trilogy

Repentance was intended as the third part of a trilogy, together with The Plea and The Wishing Tree. Tengiz Abuladze planned to incorpo­rate the characters from his two pre­vious films. The beautiful Georgian actress Lika Kavjaradze (1959-2017) was invited to Batumi, and the episo­de replicating her famous scene from The Wishing Tree was even shot, as she lies dying, dirtied with mud, humiliated. She would symbolise the victim of the Purge, the beauty smea­red in mud, insulted and degraded. However, this episode did not make it into the film.

Another character from The Wis­hing Tree, Pupala (Sopiko Chiaureli, 1937-2008), was to be transferred into Repentance. Tengiz Abuladze contacted the actress and offered to transform her into an aged Pupala with the help of sophisticated ma­keup. Sopiko Chiaureli’s answer was a counterproposal — her mother, the famous Georgian actress Veriko Anjaparidze (1897-1987), should be filmed instead, while the resemblance with the younger character from the previous film was also achieved through the outfit. Ultimately, it was decided so. The episode featuring Veriko Anjaparidze was filmed in front of her house, located on what is now Veriko Anjaparidze Street in Tbilisi. However, the final walk of ‘Pupala’ into the depths of the city’s streets was performed by a stunt. Since the makeup was mentioned, it is inevitable to note the contribution of makeup artist Soso Barnabishvili to the filmmaking process. The por­trait transformations of Varlam and Abel are also a testament to his mas­tery.

Conclusion: Good and Evil

The Plea, The Wishing Tree, and Repentance form a trilogy, which can be called so only because of its con­ceptual unity: the eternal struggle between good and evil. Tengiz Abuladze noted in one of his intervi­ews: “Our – and not only our – greatest mistake of any time, the fate­ful sin is that a huge part of society perceives the difference between evil and good in comparative terms, whe­reas in reality this difference is abso­lute.” Repentance was precisely the first cinematic victory in the battle against the ‘empire of evil’, the USSR, and remained so even in the 21^st century. Huge success followed the film’s release, which happened only after a two-year imprisonment ‘on the shelf’ by Moscow’s cen­sorship. In 1986, its rise began. Re­pentance remains the most artistically elevated anti‑Soviet film.

Notes

• Goiorgi Gvakharia, “Tengiz Abuladze – 80 (Part Two)”, Radio Liberty, March 1, 2004 (in Georgian) https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/1533940.html (accessed October 23, 2025) (All citations from Georgian are made by the author of the article).
• Tamar Otiashvili, “Repentance – The Film Tengiz Abuladze ‘Returned from the Afterlife’ to Shoot”, ge, August 14, 2018 (in Georgian) https://nostal.ge/2018/08/14/monanieba-filmi (accessed October 23, 2025).
• Ibidem.
• Gogi Gunia, “1984 in Cinema”, Digital Culture, October 19, 2013 (in Georgian) https://digitalculture.ge/1984kinoshi/ (accessed October 23, 2025).
• On the Great Purge and Beria’s role, see: Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, Random House, New York, 2005.
• Robert Sturua, “About Tengiz Abuladze”, In Tengiz Abuladze, Reflections, (Eds. Nana Janelidze and Nino Natroshvili), Cezanne Publishing, Tbilisi, 2009 (in Georgian) 48-49.
• Mikhail Agranovich, “On Tengiz Abuladze”, In Tengiz Abuladze. Reflections, (Eds. Nana Janelidze and Nino Natroshvili), Cezanne Publishing, Tbilisi, 2009, p. 210 (in Georgian).
• Merab Ninidze, The Main Thing Is Not to Become an Actor, Intelekti, Tbilisi, 2015, p. 34 (in Georgian)
• Avtandil Makharadze. “Tengiz Abuladze”. In: Tengiz Abuladze. Reflections. Eds. Nana Janelidze and Nino Natroshvili. Cezanne Publishing, Tbilisi, 2009, p. 206-207 (in Georgian).

Bibliography

Books

AGRANOVICH, Mikhail, “On Tengiz Abuladze”, In Tengiz Abuladze, Reflections, (Eds. Nana Janelidze and Nino Natroshvili), Cezanne Publishing, Tbilisi, 2009 (in Georgian).

MAKHARADZE, Avtandil. “Tengiz Abuladze”, Ibidem, pp. 206-207 (in Georgian).

NINIDZE, Merab, The Main Thing Is Not to Become an Actor, Intelekti, Tbilisi, 2015, p.107 (in Georgian).

RAYFIELD, Donald, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, Random House, New York, 2005.

STURUA, Robert, “About Tengiz Abuladze”,  In Tengiz Abuladze, Reflections, (Eds. Nana Janelidze and Nino Natroshvili), Cezanne Publishing, Tbilisi, 2009, pp. 48-49 (in Georgian).

Online Resources

GVAKHARIA, Giorgi, “Tengiz Abuladze – 80 (Part Two)”, Radio Liberty, March 1, 2004 (in Georgian) https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/1533940.html.

GUNIA, Gogi, “1984 in Cinema”, Digital Culture, October 19, 2013 (in Georgian) https://digitalculture.ge/1984kinoshi/.

OTIASHVILI, Tamar, “Repentance – The Film Tengiz Abuladze ‘Returned from the Afterlife’ to Shoot”, Nostal.ge, August 14, 2018, https://nostal.ge/2018/08/14/monanieba-filmi.