In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, 3-year-old George Sikharulidze and his family only had electricity for a few hours a day in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.

Bread lines were long and jobs were scarce in the newly independent country.

But during the so-called dark decade that followed, Sikharulidze and a childhood friend were able to watch Braveheart and other American blockbusters — dubbed in Russian — over and over on TV.

“My grandma used to buy this newspaper that had the TV schedule for the following week, so we would circle the movies. And we would wait and hope that we had the electricity to watch them,” said Sikharulidze, an associate professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame.

“We loved every moment. We would anticipate each line of dialogue. There was this love of cinema at an early age.”

‘We’ve come up together’

Sikharulidze has parlayed his love of cinema into a teaching and award-winning career as a director and screenwriter.

His first feature film, Panopticon (2024), which he developed at the Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation Writing Residency, dazzled at two July festivals and has received praise in Variety, The Film Stage, and RogerEbert.com.

It won Best Film in the parallels and encounters section at the Palic Film Festival in Serbia. And at the star-studded Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, Panopticon was a Best Film nominee and earned the Ecumenical Jury prize for touching “the spiritual dimension of our existence, expressing the values of justice, human dignity, respect for the environment, peace, and solidarity."

Panopticon — which refers to a state of conscious visibility — will be shown at six more festivals this fall.

The film centers on Sandro, 16, who is left to his own devices when his father decides to leave for an Orthodox Christian monastery to become a monk in turbulent post-Soviet Georgia. As Sandro searches for meaning and belonging, he becomes involved with a radical ultra-right group and struggles to reconcile his devotion to God with his awakening sexuality. The film examines Sandro’s humanity and a society that can warp it.

Similar to Sikharulidze’s previous shorts, Panopticon focuses on his home country — his perpetual return there for stories, he said, is likely connected to the formative time in which he grew up.

“In a sense, I am as old as the independent Georgia,” he said. “The same way that Georgia was learning how to walk again, I was learning how to walk and talk. We’ve come up together.”

This summer, Sikharulidze was in Georgia to shoot one of his three in-progress feature projects — a movie about relationships — but filming was postponed due to the volatile political situation there.

In another project, he incorporates artificial intelligence and transhumanism as backdrops to questions of faith and the body-soul dichotomy. The third planned film is about two refugees, one from Ukraine and one from Georgia, who find love in their pursuit of the American dream.

“It’s essentially the story of my mother and step-father,” he said, “but set in contemporary times.”

‘Starting from zero’

Sikharulidze was 18 and a recent high school graduate when he arrived in the U.S. to join his mother, who had moved earlier to find work.

While the move was potentially life-saving, Sikharulidze faced some initial challenges, including knowing only enough English to order food in a restaurant.

“It was quite difficult because you are leaving everything behind, everyone you ever knew, and you are starting from zero, a blank page,” he said. “I’m used to that — every new film feels like I'm starting from zero"

Enrolling at Bergen Community College in New Jersey proved to be a good start: He felt at home there as he learned English, met people from around the world, and earned an associate degree in liberal arts and humanities.

Then, in an elective film course at New York University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in media, culture, and communication — Sikharulidze was transfixed watching François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows.

“There was a spark and I realized, or I felt, rather, that here was a filmmaker who made his first film — very personal to his story, his life, and his boyhood, and it moved me. Maybe I could tell my story in a similar way,” he said. “That was the moment I decided, ‘I think I know what to do.’”

‘I let them blossom’

Since joining the Notre Dame faculty last fall, he has taught the courses The Art of Film Directing, Directing Actors for Film and TV, and Writing the Short Film.

His own shorts include “Fatherland” (2018), a Sundance Film Festival selection; and “A New Year” (2017), and “Red Apples” (2016), which were Toronto International Film Festival selections.

Teaching undergraduates the basics of film sometimes presents Sikharulidze with an interesting paradox.

“On the one hand, I'm teaching the fundamentals of film language, and on the other, I’m searching as a filmmaker for new film language,” he said. “But it is always humbling to return to the basics of any language. There is something very profound in the simplicity of communication. It keeps me grounded as a filmmaker.”

Rather than impose ideas, Sikharulidze, who earned an MFA in film directing and screenwriting at Columbia University, investigates with students how to build and direct a scene and how to tell a story.

“Perhaps there is something in the mind of a student that’s never been seen before,” he said. “I let them blossom, otherwise we’ll just produce the same kind of storytellers over and over, and that’s not what art is about.”

Sikharulidze is excited to continue honing his craft at Notre Dame.

“I value interpersonal human connection the most, and the faculty made me feel at home,” he said. “What better place to be than the place where they respect your work as an artist and want you to succeed, both in your teaching and your filmmaking?”

Originally published by Beth Staples at al.nd.edu on October 03, 2024.