Drawing Lots

The late Georgian writer, filmmaker and university professor, Zaza Khalvashi, delivers a quirky yet genuine tale of mundanity in this posthumously produced feature, completed with the help of his daughter Tamta Khalvashi. Drawing Lots is a vignette of a seaside community where an apartment block and courtyard serve as an amphitheatre for the mysterious power dynamics that play out in the residents’ intertwined lives.

Reminiscent of the misplaced climaxes of petty neighbourhood scheming and idiosyncratic localities distinctive of Béla Tarr’s films, and the deadpan undertones captured across Aki Kaurismäki’s oeuvre, the black-and-white presentation of Drawing Lots manifests a curious depth to common interactions. Khalvashi masterfully offers the audience only glimpses into the secrets and dreams of the apartment complex’s everyday figures: a melodramatic electric guitarist, unrequited love-struck teenagers, a classical violinist in a mid-life crisis, and a recently returned criminal. These fleeting snapshots create intrigue and tension as their daily lives and voyeuristic tendencies collide.

Khalvashi uses actors from the Batumi Theatre, along with non-actors, to fastidiously and farcically examine the dualities of life. Dark pasts and conflicts can be overthrown in the round by a surrender to unity, as the characters find a certain redemption in being able to support each other as individuals and as a community.

– Ol Marin