So there was an interview with Levan Gelbakhiani in 2023 and I only learned about it now?! 🤯 Oh well. Better late than never:
I have been trying to record this interview for several years. I tried to contact Levan several times after the announcement of the movie An
Few quotes below in case you don't trust me that this is worth reading!
When I asked the reason for the refusal, he replied:
“My political knowledge was never deep. After this film, I started self-education in terms of politics and activism. Before that I had zero interest at all.
I used to shout and protest about small injustices in private spaces, but I never had the goal of speaking out. I didn’t have any political views and I wasn’t interested in anything so much that I was even in an advertisement clip of the Georgian Dream. I stand and clap. That’s the level I was at.”
Let someone who was engaged in politics in the age of 19 cast the first stone (not me, that's for sure). Even if there was in fact a little bit more than "clapping" in that Georgian Dream's advertisement clip from 2016... Yep, I DO have a link to that clip!😏 And nope I WON'T give it to you just like that, oh no, not this time! Unless you ask me nicely😉
In the end, the director, Levan Akin, convinced him to shoot only a teaser, which was needed to get funding.
“We made a 10-minute teaser and in the process I realized that I really wanted it and I couldn’t say no to it,” he said. We made the teaser in a very small group, there were only 2-3 people behind the camera. At some point, I realized that I was happy and motivated, I was feeling very good, my self-esteem also increased. Many factors outweighed my refusal”.
His decision was opposed by his family and relatives. Levan says that barriers make him angry, so he agreed to the film.
When reading interviews from 2019 and 2020 mentioning he agreed "after talking with his family and friends" I was not aware this is how it looked, lol🤣 "Barriers make him angry" - top cat behaviour, my man!!!💪
