Together Apart (full version)

During Georgia-Abkhazia war of 1992-1993 two former colleagues, one Georgian, one Abkhazian took up arms on opposite sides. Thanks to a videoconference technology they got the opportunity of seeing each other and speaking about possible solutions to resolve the conflict, to share with the audience their impressions of the conversations.

The documentary ’’Together and Apart’’ addresses the conflict between the central Georgian government and its breakaway region of Abkhazia.

At the end of the 1980s several armed conflicts started in the former Soviet republics. One of them was Georgia-Abkhazia war of 1992-1993. More than 20,000 people died when the Abkhazians demanded independence, and the war ended in a stalemate. Russian troops occupy Abkhazia while refugees from the Georgian breakaway republic are lodged in abandoned hotels all over Georgia.



In 2005, with the help of videoconferencing technology Internews Europe linked ordinary people who normally could not or would not meet. Before the start of the conflict the two protagonists in the film, Kote Sichinava and Anatoly Pachilia, had worked in the same institute in Sukhumi. During the war they took up arms on opposite sides.

Today Anatoly still lives in Sukhumi and Kote lives in Tbilisi; he’s an ethnic Georgian refugee from Abkhazia. Thanks to a satellite connection, the two got the opportunity of seeing each other and speaking with each other over a period of three days, to exchange views on the conflict. Gradually they began to “break the ice” by showing each other short video background films shot by crews under their direction about their current lives. In between their dialogues, film characters are interviewed to share with the audience their reactions to the conversations. The film thus suggests an opportunity to promote the idea of responsible citizenship through the exchange of ideas and opinions between Georgians and Abkhazians.