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Tangerines

Posted on February 14, 2016June 6, 2021 by Village Vidiot

  “Tangerines,” February 14, 2016 (2013), DVD.  The legacy of imperial policy, in this case settling Estonians in Georgia over a century ago, helps set up this antiwar story of enemies and neutrals coming together to understand one another. Ivo is a rural carpenter/farmer in an Estonian village in Georgia. Estonians had been settled there under the Czar. Now there are only three, Ivo, his neighbor Margus, a mandarine orange farmer, and Juhan, the village doctor. The latter two are moving back to their ‘homeland,’ Estonia. But first Margus wants to sell his crop and Ivo, who is not going back, is making crates for this effort. But this story is not set during a moment of post-Soviet, pastoral calm. Rather, it shows us the Georgian/Abkhazian civil war in the recently independent Georgia, as the Abkhazians, backed by the Russians, try to secede. The war comes to the orange groves in a battle that sees two survivors, Ahmed, a Chechen mercenary fighting for the Abkhazians, and Nico, a Georgian soldier. Ivo takes in both and what follows is a fascinating exploration of the bitterness and tragedy of the conflict, a struggle exacerbated by the arrival of Russian troops. This well acted, well scripted, and well directed film calmly outlines these developments, although as the short on the making of the film suggests, the filming was anything but calm Checkov’s voice is never far away in this orange orchard. B and I both really like it.

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