The film Partisan, featuring celebrated French actor Vincent Cassel, was filmed in the two Georgian locations , Tbilisi and Chiatura as well as in director Ariel Kleiman’s hometown Australia last year before it was released in British cinemas on January 8, 2016.
The film’s interior scenes were shot in Australia’s south-eastern state of Victoria while the exterior scenes were filmed in several districts of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi with its Soviet-era grey apartment blocks and the decrepit grim settings of western Georgia’s mining town Chiatura.
Partisan is about a young boy raised in a secretive commune in a fictional setting without a definitive timescale or location.
Synopsis ( IMDB ) : A tangled story about a man who, in first light, seems to save battered women and abused children – bringing them to a private enclave to live free of fear albeit in a strange communal system with only the mothers, the children and one man. As the story progresses, we see how fragile this man’s ego is within some of his encounters when a child challenges him. One of his biggest challengers is a young man he saved the day he was born – which brings a nice ironic twist to the plot.
The new film has already collected the Cinematography Award at the 2015 Sundance International Film Festival in the United States (US).
Filmmaker Kleiman has won accolades for one of his earlier films. He won awards for his 2010 short film Deeper Than Yesterday at a number of prestigious cinema festivals, including the Cannes International Film Festival.