Independence, directly followed by a civil war and a battle for and around Abkhazia and Ossetia, has caused a major crisis in Georgian cinema. On the ruins of what were once the most renowned film studios, a new generation of film-makers is now emerging. Compared with the older generation (Iosseliani, Shengelaya, Abuladze etc.) the tone of the new films is more realistic. A powerful example is the dramatic Lake, the feature début of the young Kakha Kikabidze. The inspiration for this film, a psychological study about a tyrant and a slave, was a story by Henry Mann, ‘Abdication’.As a young teenager, Zura witnesses the brutal murder of his father. By a lakeside, he has to watch as a crowd of men throwhis father in the water. ‘To the bottom with him, to the fishes’, they shout. Zura moves with his mother to a town far from the scene of the crime, but the death of his father is the start of Zura’s own story. In the new city, he subjects all his classmates to his will. He convinces all of them of their guilt and gives his ‘slaves’ all kinds of tasks as punishment. But when Zura is alone, he is overwhelmed by loneliness. He decides that he wants to be a slave himself so he won’t be lonely any more. He appoints Fatty, the weakest and the fattest, as the new leader. From now on Zura will do what Fatty orders him to…
