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as we see Anna KhazaradzeS BerlinerSelected for DOK Preview Germany 2026, 63-year-old Nana is a force of nature, a woman who has spent more than three decades in Berlin and is carrying the Tbilisi she left behind.
At a refugee arrival center, she translates for Georgian and other post-Soviet asylum seekers, offers care, debates and sometimes crosses professional boundaries. Away from work, his kitchen, train journeys and familiar cafes lead to a life shaped by two cities. With his voice, photos and archives, the memories of Georgia are revealed together with the present.
“The strongest foundation of the film is the trust that I have established with Nana for more than six years,” producer/director Ana Khazaradze told Business Doc Europe. “This relationship allows me to be close to him, as his life and environment changes both in Tbilisi and in Berlin. The story takes place in Berlin, but it brings a Georgian perspective,” he adds. The film will detail Nana’s current experience in Berlin, together with Tbilisi archives of the 1980s and 1990s.
“Berliner follows a woman who has spent decades interpreting other people’s experiences as she gradually begins to tell her own,” Khazaradze emphasizes the film’s human story. Through Nana’s public works and personal memories, the film explores belonging, migration and translation, not only between languages, but also between cities, generations and different periods of history. It explores the possibilities of care and confronts its limits: what one person can carry for others, what cannot be translated, and what remains as the systems around him change.
“My experience as a producer has given me practical knowledge of international co-production, financing and festival distribution,” he adds of his business acumen in bringing the project to market despite the lack of Georgian state funding. Berliner It is a co-production of Georgian AK Films and German ma.ja.de.
in Leipzig, Khazaradze Looking for the right partners for “the next phase of the film,” especially a worldwide sales partner that connects with his “intimate, observant approach.”
“The film directly connects the Georgian and German viewers, and its theme of migration, belonging and care is a very universal theme,” Khazaradze emphasizes, addressing both financiers and viewers.
“Berliner It combines observational filmmaking with a more subjective layer of memory carried by the voice of the protagonists and archival footage of Tbilisi,” he goes on to describe the visual look of the film, which is in the late stages of production.
“The archival material introduces us to the city and the time that the main character carries in his memory. Tbilisi in the 1980s and 1990s emerges through observation with present-day Berlin, linked by Nana’s memories and associations. I develop this as a parallel strip that allows the past to interrupt or accompany the present as a biography rather than presenting it.”
