Georgia has selected Ana Urushadze’s debut Scary Mother as its entry for the best foreign-language film Oscar.
The selection committee in Tbilisi also voted to submit it as Georgia’s entry for the Golden Globes.
Scary Mother tells the story of a middle-aged woman’s bid for emancipation through literature.
Living in a drab Tbilisi apartment block, Manana (Nato Murvanidze) is quietly going crazy. Her only escape is to work on a darkly erotic thriller, whose contents she keeps as a secret from her husband, Anri (Dimitri Tatishvili).
When Manana lets Anri read an excerpt from her book, his fears that his wife is slipping into madness, come to the surface.
Scary Mother had its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the First Feature award.
Urushadze is the daughter of acclaimed Georgian director Zaza Urushadze, whose 2013 feature Tangerines was shortlisted for an Oscar.
Scary Mother, like Tangerines, is a Georgia-Estonia co-production.
The film was written and directed by Urushadze and produced by Lasha Khalvashi.
In 2013, Giorgi Ovashvili’s Corn Island made the January shortlist.
