She is young, she is talented. And she is a powerful competitor on the world festival circuit. As the film Scary Mother made its mark, many learned the name of Ana Urushadze, the Georgian director, born in Tbilisi in 1990 and a graduate of the Shota Rustaveli Theatre and the Georgia State Film University in 2013. With such short films as Ideas (2010) and One Man Loved Me (2012), Scary Mother is her full-length debut. It won the Cineuropa and the Heart of Sarajevo awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Best First Feature and Youth Jury awards at the Locarno International Film Festival. An exceptional film indeed, Scary Mother opens as a family drama but turns out to be a delicate treatment of a psychological issue. As Urushadze told Al-Ahram Weekly, “I don't remember the exact moment the idea occurred to me, but quite some time ago I realised I was extremely interested in the idea of a person alienating themselves from the group in a quest for salvation — what they are really good for — regardless of intentions. A character trying to attain some balance between two lives as an author and a mother was a source of interest to me, and so the film turned out the way it was. I keep saying the inspiration was my family but it sounds weird, because all I mean is the theme of a female author was relevant because of my sister who is an author and also my mother who used to write. What I did was I took some themes and problems and made them much more intense and that's how the story developed. “It took me a whole summer to write the film. First I wrote a short version of this film and submitted it to the Georgian National Film Centre and fortunately it was rejected. The next day I was sitting down to write the long version of the film. Before the actual shooting, which started in November, I kept editing and omitting some details.” In one remarkably poetic scene the heroine Manana decides to tell her husband about a dream she had in which she'd turned into the mythical creature, the Manananggal, which feeds on pregnant women, consuming foetuses. The Manananggal (after whom Manana is named) divides into two halves: one flies away and one remains in the terrace; Manana's husband sprinkles that letter half with salt, preventing the two halves from reconnecting. “I accidentally came across an article about this creature while I was writing the dream scene. I had planned for my protagonist to tell a long story about a dream she had that would have some influence over her husband, and when I read the details about this mythological creature, I felt that it perfectly fits Manana's current situation. I fortunately have nothing in common with Manana, although I did draw on some things — writing on my hands to remind myself of things, for example — but I intensified and exaggerated them a lot.” The Lynchian red of Manana's room at the stationary shop is actually “connected to Manana's mother, who is portrayed with red hair”. But whether Manana represents Georgian women is a different issue: “The topic of oppressed women is more or less common everywhere in the world, but I didn't want the story to be a feminist tale. If my protagonist was male the story would have been the same. I didn't want the story to have relevance to women in particular, it's just the story of one character,” which requires an extremely talented actress, “who has her own way of writing and happens to be a housewife. Nate Murvanidze is a very famous actress in Georgia, I knew her and while writing the script I had her image in my mind and fortunately she agreed to play the role.” As for production difficulties, which like women's issues are increasingly universal, Urushadze says, “There are a small number of producers in Georgia, one of them is Lasha Khalvashi and he usually works on debuts, so I contacted him and we worked together right away.” How much has her father being the renowned Georgian filmmaker Zaza Urushadze made a difference in Ana's life? “He surely does influence me because it was he who introduced me and my sister to a new kind of cinema, he used to buy videos and later DVDs so we could watch them. “The film was well received. Some people loved it and others didn't, like any film in the world, but I didn't really expect all this international attention and praise for the film and actually it is overwhelming. I try not to take it too seriously. We have many talented filmmakers, from older and younger generations, I wish they would have more opportunities and make more films in the near future. I've wanted to become a director since I was a child. There was a weird period in my life when I tried to start a career in music, but soon enough I understood that I should stand my ground and follow my original dream. I am currently working on a new script.”
