Starring non-professional young actor Tedo Bekhauri, George Ovashvili’s debut is a moving, unsentimental film about war that will speak to Russians and Georgians in particular, but carries a universal truth at its core that will resonant with everyone. Living in a Tbilisi ghetto and going nowhere with his life, 12-year-old Tedo decides to find his missing father after his mother takes a new lover. In what could nearly pass as a classical hero’s quest, Tedo crosses the border into Abkhaz and begins a dangerous, if picaresque, journey. [The Other Bank] dances between surreal and sinister, and takes an unexpected narrative turn as it draws to its conclusion. Naturalistic and unfettered in its storytelling, Ovashvili’s film examines the nature of growing up in a place where eye-for-an-eye thinking still dominates, and demands its compelling lead character to learn the hard way that the “other bank” isn’t necessarily a better place to be.