“I feel pain for them all: the Special Forces who tried to save the hostages, the crew members who perished, the passengers, the amateur terrorists who hijacked the aircraft because they needed air. Their actions cannot be justified. All one can do is try to understand them,” the director said in a statement. Together with co-writer Lasha Bugadze,he interviewed more than 100 eyewitnesses, searched the State Archives of Georgia and read all the interrogationrecords.

Tamara Tatishvili, the former head of the Georgian National Film Centre (GNFC), is producing together with Gigineishvili through 20 Steps Production in coproduction with Mikhael Finogenov and Natalia Bilan from Russia’s Nebo Films. The budget is 2.5m EUR of which 70% is secured.

Tatishvili told FNE that as GNFC has just now opened the coproduction funding competition, they are still considering whether they will apply for support. The casting is underway and the final confirmations will be done by the end of August 2015.

“What I can confirm is that we will have a mixture of well-known professional actors both from Russia and Georgia, and a certain percentage of non-professionals,” Tatishvili told FNE. The well-known Georgian art director Kote Japaridze (In Bloom, Blind Dates) is confirmed.

European coproducers and financing partners are expected to complete in the postproduction funding. A foreign editor is also under consideration.

Production Information
20 Steps Production
Akhmeteli 10a, 0159 Tbilisi, Georgia
Phone: +995 32 252 09 45
Contact Person: Tamara Tatishvili
Cell: +995 59 955 69 70
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Credits
Director: Rezo Gigineishvili
Scriptwriters: Rezo Gigineishvili, Lasha Bugadze
Art Director: Kote Japaridze