Georgia has selected Rusudan Glurjidze’s drama The Antique as its submission to the best international feature film category at the 97th Academy Awards.
The selection comes just two weeks after the feature was caught up in an unexpected legal battle at the Venice Film Festival when an emergency decree issued on behalf of Russian and Croatian producers led to the temporary suspension of its screening in the parallel Giornate degli Autori section.
The drama takes inspiration from the real-life illegal expulsion of thousands of Georgian nationals from Russia in 2006, which included director.
The deportations were part of the so-called 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy, sparked by Georgia’s arrest of a number of Russian military officers on charges of espionage and terrorism, when Vladimir Putin was in his first term as Russian president.
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