EXCLUSIVE: Croatia-based sales company Split Screen has boarded Georgian feature Tear Gas by Uta Beria which world premieres next week in Locarno’s Cinema of the Present competition.
The timely fiction film centres on 16-year-old Elene and her war-scarred family who are drawn into a mass protest in Tbilisi that transforms the streets into a battleground for freedom, forcing them to confront the fractures already threatening to tear them apart. The film shot inside real demonstrations in Georgia.
Georgia has seen a wave of protests over the past two years amid allegations of electoral fraud by the ruling Georgian Dream party. Several leading Georgian actors, journalists, poets and politicians are serving jail terms in Georgia in what are perceived as politically motivated prosecutions.
As a work in progress, Tear Gas previously won two prizes at the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s IFFR Pro awards in 2025.
Tear Gas is produced by Nino Chichua, Anna Khazaradze and Uta Beria of Georgia’s 1991 Productions, with France’s Tripode Productions and Germany’s 70 Steps co-producing.
Tear Gas marks Split Screen’s third Georgian acquisition. It also represents working with Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity, winner of the Golden Leopard in Cineasti del Presente at Locarno in 2024, and Ana Urushadze’s second film Supporting Role which won a special jury award and the FIPRESCI prize in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition this year.
Split Screen founder Marcella Jelic said: “Tear Gas is a particularly compelling film to us, we first came across the project in 2025 at Cinemart’s Darkroom at Rotterdam Film Festival where the film received the HBF Empowerment Award and the Outward Gaze Prize and later we met again with Uta Beria in MECAS, International Market dedicated to Almost Finished Films in Gran Canaria.
”We have a real soft spot for Georgian films and filmmakers, we feel these productions need international support and visibility now more than ever. We loved that the film has so many layers and is so deeply rooted in the political reality of Georgia today. We loved the combination of political relevance, an intimate youth drama and a story of a family shaped by conflict, finding themselves on opposite sides of the same protest. The fact that it was shot inside real demonstrations gives the film an incredible sense of urgency”.
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