DIRECTOR: George Sikharulidze
STARRING: Data Chachua, Ia Sukhitashvili, Malkhaz Abuladze, Vakhtang Kedeladze, Salome Gelenidze
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 35 minutes
LANGUAGE: Georgian
PLOT: When Sandro’s father renounces worldly life to join a monastery, the teenage introvert suddenly finds himself unanchored, stripped of the emotional certainties he once relied on. With his father gone and his mother working abroad, Sandro is left to navigate adolescence alone, pushed toward a fragile journey of self-discovery. Along the way, he forges an intense friendship with Lasha, a radical young man tied to an ultra-right organisation, while also confronting the beginnings of his own sexual awakening. In this liminal space between abandonment and possibility, Sandro begins to piece together who he is and who he wishes to become.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Tbilisi, Georgia
To check out all previous submissions for Georgia, click HERE.
STARRING: Data Chachua, Ia Sukhitashvili, Malkhaz Abuladze, Vakhtang Kedeladze, Salome Gelenidze
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 35 minutes
LANGUAGE: Georgian
PLOT: When Sandro’s father renounces worldly life to join a monastery, the teenage introvert suddenly finds himself unanchored, stripped of the emotional certainties he once relied on. With his father gone and his mother working abroad, Sandro is left to navigate adolescence alone, pushed toward a fragile journey of self-discovery. Along the way, he forges an intense friendship with Lasha, a radical young man tied to an ultra-right organisation, while also confronting the beginnings of his own sexual awakening. In this liminal space between abandonment and possibility, Sandro begins to piece together who he is and who he wishes to become.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Tbilisi, Georgia
To check out all previous submissions for Georgia, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Sometimes, I think that God is punishing me."
George Sikharulidze’s Panopticon is a quietly haunting and psychologically incisive coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of contemporary Georgia. Rather than approaching adolescence through familiar tropes of rebellion or teenage angst, Sikharulidze charts the emotional unraveling of Sandro, a boy left to fend for his own identity when both parents depart from his life, his mother for work abroad and his father for the severe asceticism of monastic life. The film’s atmosphere is steeped in silence, absence, and spiritual weight, and through this, it captures the disorientation of youth abruptly deprived of emotional bearings. Sikharulidze employs a visual language that mirrors Sandro’s inner confusion: restrained framing, economical dialogue, and a persistent sense of emotional distance that makes the landscape around him feel both familiar and unforgiving.
What distinguishes Panopticon is the nuanced exploration of spiritual and political influence on a young, unformed mind. Sandro’s father’s decision to withdraw into religious isolation is not treated strictly as abandonment, but as a generational manifestation of faith, guilt, and existential urgency. This vacuum, however, leaves Sandro vulnerable to other systems of authority. When he befriends Lasha, a radical young man tied to ultra-right political movements, the film shows how easily conviction can replace guidance when the need for belonging goes unanswered. Their friendship unfolds with the quiet power of inevitability, Lasha’s ideological extremity filling the space where paternal structure once was. It is a bleak but realistic portrait of how ideology can prey on emotional longing.
Sikharulidze also handles Sandro's sexual awakening with the same restraint and sensitivity that characterizes the rest of the film. Rather than sensationalizing or romanticizing it, the narrative presents sexuality as another axis of identity that confounds and destabilizes Sandro rather than clarifying him. In a society steeped in conservative expectations and religious pressure, Sandro’s emerging sexual awareness becomes a source of internal complication rather than liberation. The film carefully avoids overt commentary or easy conclusions; instead, it depicts sexuality as part of the broader emotional terrain that Sandro must navigate, alone and unprepared.
Panopticon is a film about the clash between external structures and the fragile formation of the self. Through Sandro’s isolation and the competing forces that attempt to shape him, religious devotion, nationalist ideology, social expectation, and personal desire, Sikharulidze illustrates how adolescents are often constructed by the forces that surround them rather than through conscious choice. The film suggests that identity is not a discovery but a negotiation, often made under profound emotional and cultural pressure. In this sense, Panopticon explores the central question of who we become when the world around us decides before we learn how to decide for ourselves.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Sometimes, I think that God is punishing me."
George Sikharulidze’s Panopticon is a quietly haunting and psychologically incisive coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of contemporary Georgia. Rather than approaching adolescence through familiar tropes of rebellion or teenage angst, Sikharulidze charts the emotional unraveling of Sandro, a boy left to fend for his own identity when both parents depart from his life, his mother for work abroad and his father for the severe asceticism of monastic life. The film’s atmosphere is steeped in silence, absence, and spiritual weight, and through this, it captures the disorientation of youth abruptly deprived of emotional bearings. Sikharulidze employs a visual language that mirrors Sandro’s inner confusion: restrained framing, economical dialogue, and a persistent sense of emotional distance that makes the landscape around him feel both familiar and unforgiving.
What distinguishes Panopticon is the nuanced exploration of spiritual and political influence on a young, unformed mind. Sandro’s father’s decision to withdraw into religious isolation is not treated strictly as abandonment, but as a generational manifestation of faith, guilt, and existential urgency. This vacuum, however, leaves Sandro vulnerable to other systems of authority. When he befriends Lasha, a radical young man tied to ultra-right political movements, the film shows how easily conviction can replace guidance when the need for belonging goes unanswered. Their friendship unfolds with the quiet power of inevitability, Lasha’s ideological extremity filling the space where paternal structure once was. It is a bleak but realistic portrait of how ideology can prey on emotional longing.
Sikharulidze also handles Sandro's sexual awakening with the same restraint and sensitivity that characterizes the rest of the film. Rather than sensationalizing or romanticizing it, the narrative presents sexuality as another axis of identity that confounds and destabilizes Sandro rather than clarifying him. In a society steeped in conservative expectations and religious pressure, Sandro’s emerging sexual awareness becomes a source of internal complication rather than liberation. The film carefully avoids overt commentary or easy conclusions; instead, it depicts sexuality as part of the broader emotional terrain that Sandro must navigate, alone and unprepared.
Panopticon is a film about the clash between external structures and the fragile formation of the self. Through Sandro’s isolation and the competing forces that attempt to shape him, religious devotion, nationalist ideology, social expectation, and personal desire, Sikharulidze illustrates how adolescents are often constructed by the forces that surround them rather than through conscious choice. The film suggests that identity is not a discovery but a negotiation, often made under profound emotional and cultural pressure. In this sense, Panopticon explores the central question of who we become when the world around us decides before we learn how to decide for ourselves.
