Beginning by Dea Kolumbegashvili
TBILISI: Georgia was strongly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, which shut down cinemas and film production for most of 2020, but Georgian films received new awards at international festivals. Georgian cinema days and retrospectives were held in Brussels, Tallinn, Split and Lisbon, and Georgia was the Focus Country at the 2020 Trento Film Festival.
Hundreds of films made from 1921 to 1991 are to be returned to Georgia under a deal signed with the film archives of the Russian Federation in 2016. The Georgian National Film Center (GNFC) declared 2020 the year of the 1920s cinema. Despite the epidemic situation, eight films from the 1920s brought from the Russian film archives Gosfilmofond were restored, in cooperation with the National Archives.
TBILISI: The total 2020 box office in Georgia decreased by 86% from 4,145,123 EUR / 13,264,395 GEL in 2019 to 564,637 EUR / 2,258,549 GEL in 2020, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Admissions to domestic films decreased from 37,865 in 2019 to 2,000 in 2020, while total admissions dropped by 83% from 1,359,365 in 2019 to 230,160 in 2020.
American films dominated the Georgian box office in 2020:
Bad Boys for Life directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah was released on 23 February 2020 and managed to rack up 34,776 admissions (according to Georgian Cinemas) with 88,340 EUR / 353,362 GEL gross until March, before the pandemic broke.
Jumanji directed by Jake Kasdan had 33,559 admissions and approximately 81,742 EUR / 326,968 GEL gross in 8 weeks.