HER PRESENCE FILLS the screen and your head with a kind of bovine ponderousness. This is Etero (Eka Chavleishvili), a single woman with magnificent eyebrows and a body that has widened, drooped and solidified over the years. She has been running a general cleaning goods store in rural Georgia, all her life. There is a brutal honesty in this mother earth figure, who knows of the wiles of the world, even though she’s experienced very few of them. Her story is told in Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, unequivocally one of the films you cannot afford to miss on this year’s European Film Festival in South Africa. It’s available online for free and in theatres in Rosebank Johannesburg and the Labia in Cape Town until tomorrow, 20 October 2024.

Scant in the earth-shattering narrative department, this is a small story of self-love. It’s about the proverbial bitches in a parochial community, a driver named Murman and a regular ritual involving mille-feuille puff pastries with white coffee. But it’s primarily about finding blackberries in places where few would dare to look. Why? Because they make the best jam.

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is a rural yarn in an unsophisticated world that offers itself with a sense of the glistening taboo of sex, as a cipher to how life works. It’s not sex between two lissome and youthful bodies, but quite the opposite, which makes it more rooted in a sense of overdue rampant wildness and hunger.

It focuses on how society judges and labels, tut-tuts and gets pleasure from the so-understood failures of others. It’s a tale of secrets beautifully told, one that features an impeccable directorial eye for colour and for incidents outside of the narrative framework that give the story itself an unforgettable spice. Two little girls pop sweets into one another’s mouths as Etero ponders the values of dicks and marriage in society. It’s almost a Felliniesque moment.

At 48, Etero is still a virgin. Her mother died in childbirth. A guilt that has been imposed on Etero all her life, by others. Everyone feels sorry for her in a cruel and piteous way. They think they have licence to laugh at her. Deem her failed.

Coming eye to eye with a blackbird on an isolated cliff one fine morning, she experiences a jolt from the universe that shifts her focus, her future and her sense of who she is forever.

This film gives you a guttural love of the universe to take home with you. Stripped cleanly of platitudes, it is unabashedly about grabbing life in fists full of pungently ripe blackberries and holding on to one’s self-belief and one’s privacy, come what may. Nothing else matters.

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is directed by Elene Naveriani and features a cast headed by Lia Abuladze, Teo Babukhadia, Eka Chavleishvili, Temiko Chichinadze, Mariam Gedenadze, Sopo Grigolashvili, Joni Janashia, Tengo Javakhadze, Rezi Karosanidze, Giorgi Kartvelishvili, Nana Kartvelishvili, Emzari Khachapuridze, Anka Khurtsidze, Tamar Mdinaradze, Ani Mogeladze, Gocha Nemsitsveridze, Pigria Niqabadz, Maka Oniani, Shota Sharvashidze, Iako Tchilaia,  Misho Totiskashvili and Nino Vekua. Written by Nikoloz Mdivani and Elene Naveriani based on the eponymous 2020 novel by Tamta Melashvili, it is produced by Ketie Danelia, Thomas Reichlin and Britta Rindelaub and features creative input by Agnesh Pakozdi (cinematography), Aurora Vögeli (editing), Shoka Magradze and Leli Miminoshvili (casting), Teo Baramidze (production design) and Nino Injia (costumes). In Georgian with English subtitles, it is part of the 11^th European Film Festival in South Africa, screening at The Zone in Rosebank Johannesburg, The Labia in Cape Town and online for free (subject to space on the online platform) until 20 October.