April 2020 | Sight&Sound | 41OUT
Levan Akin’s tender love story ‘And Then We
Danced’ offers an intoxicating celebration of
Georgian culture, presenting a defiant challenge
to homophobia in the country. Alex Davidson
traces its place within a small but significant
tradition of queer films from the former USSRhe film is very loving towards Georgia – it’s
almost an invitation to go,” said director Levan
Akin to me at the BFI London Film Festival last
October, discussing his film And Then We Danced – a
moving, visually gorgeous gay love story about Merab
(Levan Gelbakhiani), a teenage Georgian dancer living
in Tbilisi, who falls hard for new recruit Irakli (Bachi Val-
ishvili). “I think when it comes out in Georgia in Novem-
ber,” Akin continued, “a lot of people are going to be sur-
prised at how warm it is and how it is very celebratory.
There are many people in Georgia who don’t have any
idea about LGBTQ issues, but... the movie premiered at
the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, which really boosted
awareness. People are really proud of it.”
At those LFF screenings, Akin and Gelbakhiani re-
ceived standing ovations. One month later, the film had
its domestic premiere in Tbilisi, where Akin’s predictions
sadly proved overly hopeful, at least with regard to the
reaction from some. The film was greeted with far-right
protests, as hundreds of men tried to force their way
into the cinema to disrupt the screening against a line
of police officers in riot gear. Georgia’s Orthodox Church
condemned the film, calling it “an attack against the
church”. As well as the distress caused to audience mem-
bers, such protests also necessitated additional security
measures, adding costs to venues keen to screen the film.
When I meet with Akin again a few months later, he
expresses surprise that the hate groups have been given
so much media coverage, preferring to emphasise how
encouraged he has been by the response from some
audiences to the film. “The support and the reaction to
the film has been very intense following the premiere,”
he says. “Many older people who have never seen any
LGBTQ stories were very moved by it. The film has
become almost a symbol in Georgia, with people play-
ing the music at demonstrations. It’s really wild.”
The Swedish-Georgian director was born in Stockholm.
“But we used to go to Georgia every summer. I have an in-
sider and an outsider perspective at the same time, which
is really fascinating,” he says. “A lot of the time you are
so ingrained in a country because you live there, you are
blind to it.” Georgia has a complex relationship to homo-
sexuality. Compared to other former Soviet states,
the country is legislatively fairly progressive, withT