Director Nana Djordjadze made the only Georgian film to be nominated for an oscar, A Chef in Love (1996). Her 1986 comedy, My English Grandfather also called Robinson Crusoe in Georgia hence Robinsoniada, was entered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival and won the prestigious Caméra d’Or as a first feature. Djordjadze (born in 1948) graduated in architecture but started acting and then in 1974 enrolled in the film classes of Tengiz Abuladze and Irakli Kvririkadze in the Faculty of Film Direction at the Rustaveli State Theatre Institute, Tbilisi. Like other leading Georgian filmmakers of the time, Djordjadze left Georgia in the early 1990s and has made her home in Berlin. 

An industrious English telegraph worker is laying telegraph poles for a British company in a remote part of Georgia, as the Bolsheviks are struggling to gain power. He falls in love with a Georgian girl and decides to stay on after the company he is working for leaves Georgia and as the Bolsheviks seize power in 1921.

He is soon forced to flee from his property and sets up home in a small Island of British territory – the three meters surrounding a telegraph pole, land which the British acquired to work on and still own. The comic story unfolds in flashbacks. 

My English Grandfather will be screened in Georgian with English subtitles 

         On Wednesday 21st September 7pm at the      

       Georgian Embassy

       4 Russell Gardens

       London W14 8EZ

       020 7603 7799