Temo Re

Temo Re

Still from Temo Re (2025)
International Film Festival Rotterdam

VERDICT: This Marker-esque monochrome photomontage adapts its protagonist’s docufiction memoir into a slyly funny sketch of a struggling actor in contemporary Tbilisi.

It is rare that the camera strays far from the protagonist in Temo Re.

Directed and shot by Anka Gujabidze on a shoestring budget, the film freely adapts Temo Rekviashvili’s novel Courier’s Tales, which was itself a hybrid memoir of his life as a scooter courier when unable to get much acting work. With Rekviashvili playing himself, Gujabidze condenses his book into a single day of ranging around his city and the various escapades that he becomes involved in along the way. Shot on a still camera and pit together in the edit, Temo Re is a photomontage that obviously bears a resemblance to Chris Marker’s La Jetée but feels completely different, a charming and slightly surreal shaggy dog story.

The visuals are perhaps the most pertinent place to start given the unusual aspect they give a film like this. Over the course of the shoot, Gujabidze took more than 90,000 photographs, of which some 1,200 make up the film’s visual track. Gujabidze and Levan Butkhuzi edit them together in a constantly shifting rhythm that seems to change the way time works on screen. While the audio continues unbroken, a delay between photos creates an elongation that makes the events on the screen – such as an elderly couple crossing a railway track with a heavy bag – take longer. In other instances, like Temo sliding down a banister, the photos are cut together quickly, creating an almost stop-motion sense of movement. This faltering tempo feels like an evocation of Temo’s own stop-start life.

The narrative follows as Temo traverses the city making deliveries and undertaking other errands, from getting his scooter’s fan belt fixed to doing some acting work for a local event. At one point, Temo’s narration states that he considered calling his memoir “the adventures of an unlucky actor” but decides against it as casting himself as unlucky seems disingenuous to other actors. It would also misrepresent the – admittedly sometimes strange – mundanity of these various vignettes. As Temo struggles to deal with his lot as a courier, Gujabidze’s camera, peering over his shoulder at the people he passes on the sidewalk, captures a curious portrait of the city around him.

Director, producer, cinematography: Anka Gujabidze
Cast: Temo Rekviashvili, Sandro Kalandadze, Natalia Gabisonia, Akaki Sioridze, Mikheil Abramishvili
Screenplay: Temo Rekviashvili, Anka Gujabidze, Salome Asatiani
Editing: Anka Gujabidze, Levan Butkhuzi
Sound: Anka Gujabidze, Tamta Mandzulashvili
Music: Robert Schumann, Georgian folklore, Nodar Gabunia, Tamara Dolidze
Venue:
International Film Festival Rotterdam (Tiger Short Competition)
In Georgian
50 minutes