George Sikharulidze: “The 400 shots were decisive in my desire to become a filmmaker”
Meeting with the young Georgian filmmaker around the influences of his powerful first feature film, on which the never overwhelming shadow of Truffaut
Panopticon is a captivating film because it tackles many subjects in depth: adolescence, father-son relationship, sexual desires, political positions … What was the initial spark that prompted you to write this film?
There were many personal emotions in me, accumulated over time. A winter, in a Maine hut, I decided to sleep on paper. This is how the first 60 -page version of the scenario was born. These interior feelings touched on my turbulent relationship with my father, during the hectic and adventurous period of my sexual awakening in Georgia, and of course in the political climate, before and after the covid, in my country. When I joined the Cinéfondation residence, I came with these 60 pages to develop history. I chose to locate the story in 2019: even if a part is autobiographical, it seemed to me that adolescence in Georgia, at that time, faced new challenges, more current. And as I refine the scenario in Paris, external, cultural and political events, which took place in Georgia, naturally integrated into the story.
We see in your film images of Four hundred blows. This choice is surely not due to chance. Why this film? And what is your relation to the new wave?
When I was a student in Nyu, I was mainly interested in cultural theory – Derrida, Foucault and especially Roland Barthes, whom I adored. One day, I took a cinematographic history and form lesson. The teacher showed us The four hundred blows. I had a very strong reaction: for the first time, I saw someone telling their childhood and adolescence so intimate, so close, and I understood that I could perhaps express myself by cinema. When I arrived at the Cinéfondation residence in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, I discovered a plaque indicating that François Truffaut had lived there and shot many scenes of the film in the neighborhood. The same evening, I saw the film again and I realized that the grid I entered every day was the exact place of a scene between Antoine and René, when they decide to dry the lessons. Right opposite, at the current location of KB coffee, there is the building entrance where they hide their satchels. Later, staying at the Moulin d’Andé to continue writing, I was shown the room where Truffaut had lived and the projection room. That evening, by the way, I heard familiar music: it was The four hundred blowsprojected with the unforgettable partition of Jean Constantin. All these signs decided to include this film in tribute. I wrote to the Truffaut family, who accepted with enthusiasm. Finally, the link is simple: our two films stage a teenager who has his two parents, but who is not accompanied by none of the two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od3rqped3aw
Have some films influenced the creation of the visual atmosphere of Panopticon With your director of photography Oleg Mutu?
Yes, many films inspired me, but not really for their visual atmosphere. Even before Oleg’s arrival in Georgia, I had drawn the entire storyboard. We followed these plans very closely, except when the game of the actors or the weather required us to improvise. I knew that I wanted to shoot anamorphic: staying close to Sandro, my young hero, while showing the space around him. The idea was to be subjectively aligned with him, while making visible that he is trapped in a company that conditions him. The films that fed me were rather important for their stories and their characters: Breath to the heart by Louis Malle, Decalogue 6 of Kieslowski, and The Luna de Bertolucci.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufv3a1_wesm
The writing of your main character is particularly chiselled. We never really like him, but we never lose a form of empathy towards him either. Was it complex to maintain this fragile balance in writing, filming and editing?
Yes, it was a challenge. People do not always like honesty and frontality, but I knew it was necessary to write this unhappy character, with his faults and, sometimes, some redemptive qualities. This is why the opening scene directly plunges the spectator into a moment of public friction, before inviting him to experience empathy for him. I like the characters close to real life: complexes, morally ambiguous, with shadow areas. Unexpected inspiration came to me from James Joyce and Leopold Bloom in Ulysses : a character sometimes detestable, but to whom we cannot help but get attached. When I entrusted the role to Data Chachua, his very first in the cinema, we worked a lot together: discussions, views, exploration of the character’s shades. It was a demanding task, but Data is intuitive and intelligent. He went to get depths that feel on the screen.
This portrait of a young man also gives an important place to strong female characters. Why was it essential for you that they occupy this place, faced with absent or fleeting men?
I grew up surrounded by three women: my grandmother, my mother and my sister. So I knew that in the film, it would be the female characters who would show Sandro the right path. With hindsight, I realize that I wanted, even unconsciously, to break with the stereotypical and misogynist representation of women in the cinema where they have long been confined to three roles: the mother, the virgin, or the prostitute. Now this is also how many young boys in Georgia categorize women by growing up, and Sandro is no exception. He sees Tina, his girlfriend, like a holy virgin he wants to marry. He reduces Lana, his classmate, to a girl who sells her body. And he fantasizes about his friend’s mother. But the key to the story is the moment when he understands that these women are much more complex than these three misogynist archetypes. He discovers that Tina was right: she was only a sincere and loving girlfriend. He learns to admire Lana. And he understands that his friend’s mother is much more than a simple object of desire. My favorite relationship in the film is the one between Sandro and Natalia, this hairdresser who would have liked to become a dancer, mother of a boy whom he met while playing football. It is both a mother-son relationship, but not quite; A romantic relationship, but not really; A friendship, but which exceeds this category. It is precisely this impossibility of classifying the relationship that touches me and attracts me to the cinema.
By George Sikharulidze. With Malhaz Abuladze, Chachua date, Salome Gelenidze … Duration 1h35. Released September 24, 2025
