AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX EUROPE FROM 2021
TAMING THE GARDEN
მოთვინიერება
91' 2021
The opening shot of filmmaker Salomé Jashi’s striking environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the vast Black Sea. Its destination lies within a garden countless miles away, privately owned by a wealthy and anonymous man whose passion resides in the removal, and subsequent replanting, of foreign trees into his own man-made Eden.
With astonishing cinematic style,Taming the Garden tracks the surreal uprooting of ancient trees from their Georgian locales. With each removal, tensions flare between workers and villagers. Some see financial incentives—new roads, handsome fees—while others angrily mourn the loss of what was assumed an immovable monolith of their town’s collective history and memory. With a steady and shrewdly observant eye, Jashi documents a single man’s power over Earth’s natural gardens: how majestic living artifacts of a country’s identity can so effortlessly become uprooted by individuals with no connection to the nature they now claim as their own.
- Sundance Film Festival
A film by Salomé Jashi
Cinematographers Goga Devdariani, Salomé Jashi
Editor Chris Wright
Sound recordists Nino Tevdorashvili,
Ana Davitashvili, Tengo Mandzulashvili
Sound designer Philippe Ciompi
Music supervisor Celia Stroom
Researcher Tamara Mshvenieradze
Produced by Vadim Jendreyko, Erik Winker, Martin Roelly, Salomé Jashi
Mira Film, CORSO Film, Sakdoc Film
World Sales
Syndicado Film Sales
Aleksandar Govedarica
+421949635890
Support
Federal Office for Culture Switzerland,
Film und Medien Stiftung NRW,
Eurimages, Basel Film Fund, IDFA Bertha Fund,
Georgian National Film Center, Robert Bosch Stiftung
/ Literatisches Colloquim Berlin LCB,
Nipkow Program, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin,
HEAD post production award
In collaboration with broadcasters
SRF / SRG SSR, Radio Bremen, Arte, Yle
Distribution support
Swiss Films
Selected snippets from reviews
"Quietly magnificent and strange" - Jessica Kiang, Variety
"No film has lingered in my memory longer than Salomé Jashi’s deceptively simple spare look at both the physical process of moving this massive living thing and the conflict it engenders among a village’s locals. Not just because the images, starting with that opening shot of something that immediately feels both beautiful and wrong, are breathtaking. It lays out a complicated argument about ecology, economics, compromise, class, and humanity’s need to conquer and/or “tame” nature without resorting to an attack via polemics." - David Fear, Rolling Stone
"A film where the offbeat subject matter and striking imagery make an entrancing combination" - Screen Daily
"With its static long takes and slow-moving points-of-focus, Taming the Garden is full of evocative imagery." – Sandi Rankaduwa, POV
“Taming the Garden” [has] stuck with me the most out of the docs I absorbed at Sundance... I’m already looking forward to falling under the strange spell of “Taming the Garden” once again; it’s a documentary worthy of IMAX…" - Kens5
Selected Festivals and Awards
Sundance Film Festival, World Cinema Competition
Berlinale Forum
Cinema du Réel Special Mention of the Young Jury Prize
DCEFF Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, USA
FICUNAM , Mexico City Award for Best Film in the International Competition
Docudays UA, Kiev Main Award of DOCU/WORLD International Competition
Hong Kong International Film Festival
CPH:DOX, Copenhagen
Hot Docs, Toronto
New Directors/New Films, NYC
DOK.fest Münich
DocsBarcelona International Documentary Film Festival
Open City Documentary Festival, London
Magnificent 7, Serbia
Locarno Film Festival
São Paolo International Film Festival
Sydney Film Festival
IDFA - Best of Fests
Filmkunstfest MV, Schwerin, Germany Best Documentary Award
CinéDOC, Tbilisi Focus Caucasus Special Jury Mention
FICMEC, Canary Islands Best Documentary Feature Award
Majordocs, Spain Special Award of the Jury for Artistic Achievement
Underhilll Fest, Montenegro Best International Documentary
CineFest Miskolc International Film Festival, Hungary Winner of CineDocs Competition
IFF ELBE DOCK, Czech Republic Special Mention
Golden Apricot IFF, Armenia FIPRESCI Prize
Tacoma Film Festival, USA Best Cinematography Documentary Feature
CINETEKTON! Festival Internacional de Cine y Arquitectura, Mexico
Qara Film Festival, Kazakhstan Special Award of the Jury
IFF Message to Men, Russia Award for Best Documentary
Press reviews and interviews
The Guardian by Peter Bradshow
The Guardian by Claire Armitstead
Filmmaker Magazine interview with the filmmaker
Business Doc Europe, Geoffrey Macnab| Sundance
Business Doc Europe, Mark Adams | Berlinale
Women and Hollywood interview with the filmmaker
NPR interview with Kenneth Turan
48Hills- Independendent San Francisco News + Culture
CinExpress (Georgian)
Haus der Dokumentarfilm (German)
Docs in Orbit interview with the filmmaker
Calvet Journal interview with the filmmaker
Cineuropa interview with the filmmaker
Screen Slate interview with the filmmaker
Voice of America (Russian Service)
Girls at Film (Spanish)
Zeitgeschichte (German)
SpoilerMovies (Portuguese)
Un-sci (Russian)
Rai Radio 1 (Italian)
Arte (French)
MDR Artour (German)
Das Erste ttt (German)
Facebook www.facebook.com/tamingthegarden
Instagram @tamingthegarden