Levan Koguashvili Takes a Dusty Love Story to Venice

Levan Koguashvili's dropping "Guria" at Venice this month—a black-and-white tragicomedy that's equal parts romance and rural struggle. The film follows Zuriko, a 45-year-old widower and farmer in western Georgia, trying to navigate two things that don't come easy: finding love again and getting a decent price for his hazelnuts. Yeah, that's the real tension here.

It's the kind of specificity that separates actual cinema from the polished nothing most streaming services push. You get a real person, in a real place, dealing with real problems that aren't designed to fit a three-act screenplay template. The film's in the Venice Spotlight section come Sept. 9, which means programmers saw something worth showing to the world.

Georgian cinema's been having its moment—the country's got stories rooted in time and place that Hollywood forgot how to tell. "Guria" sounds like it's tapping into that, bringing '90s Georgia to life without nostalgia goggles. Sometimes the most human films are the ones about a man and his crops and the loneliness that comes with both.

Read the full story at Variety → https://variety.com/2026/film/global/levan-koguashvili-guria-venice-film-festival-1236853278/