Hostages

"Hostages" (2017) is a Georgian historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Rezo Gigineishvili reconstructs a night in November 1983 Tbilisi: seven young people from the city's privileged families had been quietly plotting to seize a Soviet aircraft and fly west. Irakli Kvirikadze, Tinatin Dalakishvili and Merab Ninidze lead the ensemble.

The cover story is a wedding — the right families, the right toasts, all the surface trappings of Soviet normalcy — while underneath, the plan is hours from execution. Gigineishvili does not editorialize. He shows what kind of daily reality produces people willing to risk everything, including the lives of strangers on a plane.

The incident was largely unknown outside Georgia before this film. It picked up festival awards and started a conversation the region still finds uncomfortable: how Soviet-era privilege and total political powerlessness coexisted in the same apartment. Stream "Hostages" (2017) online on iFILM.