Lev­an Akin: ​‘A lot of peo­ple in Geor­gia are liv­ing secret lives’

In Geor­gia, a tiny ex-Sovi­et state with a pop­u­la­tion of around three-and-a-half mil­lion, queer activists have been fight­ing for Pride since 2013. Social atti­tudes hard­ly sup­port their cause: a 2014 sur­vey sug­gest­ed that 86.1 per cent of the Geor­gian pub­lic found homo­sex­u­al­i­ty to be ​“nev­er jus­ti­fi­able”; 31.9 per cent would sug­gest the same about divorce.

Much of this is root­ed in strict tra­di­tion­al­ism. But And Then We Danced, from Swedish-Geor­gian direc­tor Lev­an Akin, is chang­ing the tide. At its core, the film is a del­i­cate­ly com­pas­sion­ate queer com­ing-of-age sto­ry – more evoca­tive of a John Hugh­es flick than Call Me by Your Name – but the broad­er state­ment is clear: queer­ness can coin­cide with tra­di­tion. Here Lev­an speaks about the gen­er­a­tional gap in Geor­gia, the country’s queer under­ground, and the series of hur­dles cre­at­ed by the state.

LWLies: And Then We Danced is a mul­ti-faceted movie. You have this beau­ti­ful com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tive, and then the roman­tic arc between the two leads, and it’s all framed with­in the wider con­text of Georgia’s anti-queer tra­di­tion­al­ism. What did you want to face first?

Lev­an: This film real­ly didn’t come about in a way that you’d usu­al­ly make films. I saw the parade in 2013, and the kids being attacked by the crazy peo­ple, and I felt ashamed when I saw that. It was ridicu­lous in so many ways. So I went there, but I wait­ed until 2016 because I was shoot­ing anoth­er movie when these news clips came out. I start­ed doing inter­views with young peo­ple – LGBT+, but also just reg­u­lar young Geor­gian peo­ple – and old­er peo­ple. What I found was – and I think this is com­mon in many of the post-Sovi­et coun­tries – that the old­er gen­er­a­tion, and this young gen­er­a­tion which has grown up on the inter­net, are liv­ing in dif­fer­ent eras.

That gen­er­a­tional gap comes up so much in the film. Merab’s clos­er cir­cle of friends in the ensem­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mary, are cer­tain­ly more progressive.

Def­i­nite­ly. And you know, I went there and I start­ed explor­ing this top­ic. I had no idea I was going to make this movie, but this theme of tra­di­tion stand­ing in the way of you liv­ing your true life…

Lib­er­a­tion?

Yes, lib­er­a­tion! Empow­er­ment. That was very clear to me. I felt that a lot of peo­ple in Geor­gia were liv­ing secret lives. Even in the old­er gen­er­a­tion, because in Geor­gia there’s no pri­vate sphere. Every­one knows basi­cal­ly every­thing about every­one. You live your life for oth­er peo­ple, and what they’re going to think of you.

How is the cap­i­tal, Tbil­isi, in that regard?

It’s a lit­tle bet­ter, but they live in these lit­tle court­yards where every­one knows every­thing. It’s endear­ing, too, when [in And Then We Danced] the woman takes down [Merab’s] col­lar on the bus. You know, she just invades his pri­vate space, but it also comes with a lot of neg­a­tives. There’s a whole under­ground and I real­ly want­ed to show that in the film, too, not just the parts that show my nar­ra­tive. That there are oth­er things going on in this city, and there are things bub­bling under the sur­face, and hope­ful­ly they will bub­ble up even­tu­al­ly, and come into the open.

Well there is that con­stant ten­sion; the World Val­ues Sur­vey rates Geor­gia as the third most homo­pho­bic coun­try in the world. But one of the things that the film does so well is to show that under­ground queer contingent.

But I also want­ed to say, ​‘Lis­ten, you can love your tra­di­tion, and your coun­try, and still be pro­gres­sive.’ A lot of what I noticed, espe­cial­ly in my inter­views, is that a lot of the young gen­er­a­tion real­ly shunned every­thing that had to do with old­er cul­ture because it rep­re­sent­ed oppres­sion for them, and I don’t want the big­ots to hijack this beau­ti­ful cul­ture. The poly­phon­ic singing is on the UNESCO Cul­tur­al Her­itage list; the danc­ing is amaz­ing. Why should oth­er peo­ple tell us what it means to be Geor­gian, or British, or Swedish? That’s not for them to decide.

What has the reac­tion been like in Georgia?

It’s very divid­ed. The media reac­tion has been so over­whelm­ing­ly positive.

Why do you think that is?

Because peo­ple are long­ing for change. And this film is hard for even the worst crit­ics to crit­i­cise. It’s putting Geor­gia on the world map. There are no Geor­gian movies that have trav­elled this far, that have become this big, late­ly. Also because of Cannes, which sort of legit­imised the movie, and I think it became hard­er for the haters to just dis­miss it. On the oth­er hand, I think a lot of peo­ple are just avoid­ing to talk about it, polit­i­cal fig­ures and things – they’re just avoid­ing it.

It’s the same thing, of course, with Tbil­isi Pride: that veil of avoidance.

That’s their MO, just to put their head in the sand.

What sig­nif­i­cant issues did you face in shoot­ing on loca­tion? Obvi­ous­ly you would have had peo­ple ques­tion­ing what the film was about. It’s pret­ty clear in some scenes that it’s a queer relationship.

For sure. We had anoth­er sto­ry – we used to say that we were French tourists who came to Geor­gia and fell in love with the coun­try. How­ev­er, when we approached the Geor­gian Nation­al Ensem­ble to ask if they would help us make the film, they sort of kicked us out and start­ed spread­ing every­where what we were doing.

They active­ly tried to impede the film being made?

Oh, they did! I mean, we couldn’t get any dancers; the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er we used is anony­mous, it real­ly was bad for us.

That was a point you raised when you intro­duced the film at Cannes – you said that around 50 per cent of the cred­its are anonymous.

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s 50 per cent…

But it’s significant.

Oh, yeah. All the peo­ple who sing all the songs are anonymous.

How did the wider cast­ing process go in that regard? Was it dif­fi­cult to find peo­ple who would go with the queer sub­ject matter?

When it came to the roles of the old man and the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, there were some homo­phobes who didn’t want to do it, but it was also so good, because it was like an idiot test. As soon as they knew, they were either fine with it, or it was goodbye.

And Then We Danced is released 13 March. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.