Magic Mountain

High up on the mountains of Georgia stands a majestic mansion, in an idyllic landscape, built on the orders of the very last Tsar of the Romanov dynasty. The building, now almost decrepit, carries no trace of its former glory; instead, it functions as the Abastumani sanatorium which houses stigmatized and marginalized tuberculosis patients. Magic Mountain unveils the building’s history, with Mariam Chachia, the co-director's own personal brush with TB as a starting point. The historical path, the absurdness, the grief, and the plight of a whole entire country are engraved on its crumbling shell. Infinitely more than a simple guided tour in the innards of the sanatorium, Magic Mountain consists of an immersion to a personal, as well as collective nightmare, imbued with an almost metaphysical atmosphere, within the humidity and the fog embracing the once magnificent structure. Similarly to Salomé Jashi’s critically acclaimed Taming the Garden (2021), Magic Mountain talks about Georgia and the post-Soviet condition with utmost profoundness and deep emotion.