Holy Electricity
Tato Kotetishvili / Georgia & Netherlands / 2024 / 95 min
Fiction and social realism merge in an imaginative film from Georgia, where a young man and his uncle come up with a bright idea: they are going to get rich selling neon crosses.
Tbilisi, Georgia. A man is dead. He leaves behind his half-grown son Gonga and uncle Bart. The two of them drift around the suburbs while Bart (who used to be Gonga’s aunt) tries to teach Gonga how to be a real man and everything that goes with it – like how to park a car, smoke weed, drink and put on a condom properly.
Bart is a hustler who owes money and finds things at the dump and sells them on. On a day of drifting, they find a suitcase full of rusty crosses and Bart has a bright idea: turn the crosses into neon crucifixes to sell to the townspeople by going door-to-door. The business is a success, the money is flowing in, but then Bart goes to the casino.
‘Holy Electricity’ is a playful fable and an endearing portrait of Tbilisi and its people. An audience favorite where imaginative fiction and stylized social realism are each other’s best friends – and an example of why Georgian cinema is on a roll right now.