Smiling Georgia

Elections 2012 in Georgia. “Smiling Georgia” is the ruling party’s campaign and promises new teeth for all residents over 50 - free of charge. A crowd of politicians, doctors and journalists toss through the villages and pull people's teeth out. Authors of the campaign, lose the elections and the promise remains just a promise. People are left without the teeth.

Year 2020, a beautiful village surrounded by hills and forests called No Name. Smiling Georgia follows the lives of the people in this village which was a part of the pre-election program. Even now, people have to slurp liquid food and try to cope with their everyday life with gallows humor. We follow four main characters. Bezhan - a man who lives with his wife and has dreams about a new Georgian government which will come one day and fix all the problems. Nana, a 58-year-old woman who got her 15 teeth pulled out all at once and lives with a withdrawn husband. Lamara, an elderly woman who for 8 years has been carrying in her bag the useless dentures that the new government gave her but turned out too big for her mouth. So, a man who borrows his neighbor’s dentures to attend a wedding. The film starts in fall, then we see snow, then spring and summer comes; the story ends in the fall with the 2020 elections. We feel the flow of life in the village where nothing changes. Only for a short period of time, during the pre-election craze, people seem to remember about village No Name.

November 2020, there are parliamentary elections being held again. Pre-election process begins. Strangers visit the village and put up posters of politicians on the trees. A young politician comes to the village and makes pre-election promises. Teethless people sit and listen. On the day of the elections the crowds discuss the politics and votes. The day after everything is calm again. Nodar and Bezhan sit in the forest contemplating. “We should take care of ourselves, no one will do it for us” – they say.