Taming the Garden

The urban and rural trees that the former Georgian prime minister buys up and moves across the country to his garden represent for ordinary rural people a shared history and formative objects of the identities of the place. But a shared emotional connection to these culturally valuable plants, when the machinations of money and negotiation are involved, awakens long unspoken political dissent. Deliberately omitting some essential information, the documentary relies on archetypal figures and situations to present the story of a myth of a great dream come true against the drama of everyday life of ordinary people. Director Salome Jashi's unique sense of observation takes the form of a poetic visual style that hypnotizes the viewer's perception with shots of the technologically challenging process of untangling the web of roots and the logistically unimaginable relocation of these opulent giants.