Filmmaker Mari Gulbiani’s new feature Before Father Gets Back will premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, a leading Balkan cinema event, next month.

Following its screening at the Sheffield Doc/Fest Documentary Festival in the United Kingdom, the film will be on screens to the Bosnian fest boasting “a paying audience of over 100,000”. The Georgian-French-German co-production focuses on two girls in Georgia’s north-eastern Pankisi Valley.  Iman and Eva, two Muslim friends, discover the inspiring power of cinema in their village, part of the troubled region with political and social tension for decades.

[For the protagonists] the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives”, said the Sheffield Doc/Fest summary for the feature.

Produced by Tekla Machavariani, it is also described as a “film about friendship, longing and separation” with its focus on family members leaving the Georgian vallery to join the Islamic State in the Middle East. The Sarajevo Film Festival’s documentary competition program will include other works by directors from across Europe. The festival is scheduled to run between August 10-17.