17/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Lana Gogoberidze’s documentary, co-directed by her daughter Salomé Alexi, is a moving personal story that features a unique family clan of female filmmakers

A mother is forcibly separated from her little daughter, as well as from her artistic vocation, to be thrown, innocent, into the camps of the USSR’s gulag archipelago during Stalin’s Great Purge. But the daughter finds a way to reconnect with her through cinema and passes on the creative passion to her own daughter as well.

This is only a simplified scaffolding for the tragic, but also fascinating and invigorating, story of three generations of Georgian filmmakers: the first female director in Georgia, Nutsa Gogoberidze; her daughter Lana, who appears as the documentary’s storyteller, with a deep, velvety voice; and Salomé, who produced and co-directed the film side by side with her then 94-year-old mother. It was only during the MoMA presentation of Nutsa’s silent masterpieces recently dug out of the archives, Buba (1930) and Uzhmuri (1934), that her heiresses realised they were the sole example of a three-generational female filmmaking dynasty in the history of cinema, which adds extra factual value to the chronicles unveiled by this film. After being shown in Georgia at the end of 2023, Mother and Daughter, or the Night Is Never Complete has just celebrated its international premiere in the Forum Special strand of this year’s Berlinale.

By initially emphasising the recurring theme of meeting and separation, Gogoberidze delves into the challenging journey of reconnecting with her mother after a decade of them living apart during her formative years. But instead of pointing out the culprits of this dramatic turn in both of their lives, she focuses on the deeper meaning of this event – it seems that the little girl had to be separated from her mother in order to feel the urge to shoot a film. For connoisseurs of Lana Gogoberidze's filmography, a whole new interpretation of her works unfolds, tightly bound to the relationship she had with her mother, from near and far. The documentary reveals connections between key episodes from titles such as Some Interviews on Personal Matters (1978) and The Waltz on the Pechora (1992), for example, and real biographical events, as well as coincidences in the content of the films of both, intuitively included before Lana had the chance to see her mother's work. Тhe varied palette of strong female characters in Gogoberidze's films acquires even more realistic dimensions, intertwining elements of mother and daughter, both of whom were raised in a spirit of emancipated views and female solidarity. Eventually, the trauma they experienced proved to be character-building, given the impressive personality that Lana developed. “Despite all separations, life is one great meeting,” she concludes.

The diverse array of film materials, comprising family photos, footage from Nutsa’s works and freshly shot content ordered into chapters, is handled with astonishing ease, so that despite the intricate texture of the film, the emotional depth remains prominently in focus. Beyond the revelation of turbulent life paths and impressive excerpts distinguished by playful editing, what truly captivates is the atmosphere of warmth and togetherness in which three generations of female directors have coexisted and collaborated. Always surrounded by bohemian friends, and like-minded artists and intellectuals, initially in the legendary blue room of Lana's birth house, Gogoberidze's indomitable spirit permeates all subsequent homes and environments, as well as the screen of this most recent work of hers. Like all of Gogoberidze’s previous films, this one also inspires inextinguishable hope, ending with the Paul Eluard verse borrowed for the title and recited by the director herself: “The night is never complete/There is always after grief an open window, a lighted window.”

Mother and Daughter, or the Night Is Never Complete was produced by Georgia’s 3003 Film Production and co-produced by France’s Manuel Cam.