Shindisi (Dito Tsintsadze, 2019): Georgia

Reviewed by Kirsten Anderberg. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.

“Shindisi” is a film about a 2008 Russian invasion inside the country of Georgia, in a small town named Shindisi. The film follows the true story of a Russian sabotage of Georgian soldiers inside a promised military peace corridor. Heroic residents of Shindisi risk their own lives to save several of the soldiers wounded in the massacre, working with local priests to cover their tracks. Gripping imagery of tanks through smoke, and helicopters at intimidatingly close proximity to residents hiding wounded soldiers give the audience a feeling of being in the war zone, in fear for all of the Georgian people involved.

Subtitled in English, the film opens with the harassment of Georgian people in the war zone, and extracts a humane empathy watching these people suffer. A following gruesome brutality and overkill on the part of the Russian soldiers, makes easy targets of Georgian soldiers celebrating on home soil, in a peace corridor. Actual footage of the soldiers moments prior to the attack, found on a cell phone of a soldier, bring home the haunting reality that these are real life events. Being raised in the United States, where wars have not been fought on the soil of my country in my lifetime, this film gave my spine shivers at times, comprehending what people are living through in other countries trapped in war zones. The powerful music combined with metaphoric imagery delivered a dread of war that I experienced physically watching the war scenes. The fear, and yet hope of resistance lends a dark and light yin yang to the film.

Heroic people living in Shindisi rise to a communal humanitarianism by extending the safe cover of their home to wounded soldiers outside their fences, and it is clear that war affects not just the soldiers, but the people living where the wars explode as well. While there were times when it was a bit hard to follow the action, as the uniforms of both sides of the war were similar gray and green fatigues, and little background information was supplied about the politics between Georgia and Russia, the emotions came through loud and clear.

A new technological twist, of ringing cell phones in pockets of fallen soldiers on the battle field in the beginning shots of the movie bring it into current times. Hearing ringing cell phones amidst land strewn with dead soldiers takes the audience aback for a moment to think about that. Unlike war movies from Vietnam, Korea or WWII, newer wars involve new technology, providing eerie rings, on battlefields of the dead.