Heimatfilm Boards Elene Naveriani’s CineMart Selection ‘Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Bettina Brokemper of Cologne-based Heimatfilm, the German co-producer of Lars von Trier films including “Melancholia” and “Antichrist,” has boarded “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” the third feature from rising Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani, which was selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart co-production market.Based on the novel by Georgian author and feminist activist Tamta Melashili, the film tells the story of a single woman in her late 40s stuck in a small, backward-looking town who discovers love for the first time.Naveriani, who directed the Rotterdam premiere “I Am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth” and the Locarno prize winner “Wet Sand,” told Variety that when she first read Melashili’s novel she “imagined how powerful it would be to see this story on the screen, how empowering and controversial.” “The main character of the story, Etero, is a feminist in her own way – without even realizing it,” she said. “She struggles in her present with painful experiences that she has endured in her past.

She was always invisible, but since the death of her brother and her father she has somehow rebuilt herself. She has guided her life to stay away from men.

She runs a household supply store with products she knows only women would come to buy. She leads a simple but fiercely independent life.”Though Etero’s aim “isn’t to revolutionize the world,” added the director, “every day she wins a tiny revolution by confronting the role people try to assign to her.”“Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” is a timely story in which body politics and sexuality will play a key role.“Culturally and socially, as women age their bodies are considered ‘out of date’ in contrast to younger bodies that are.