School start

in the Georgian village of Makarta, which lays only twenty kilometers from the Georgian military road connecting Tbilisi with Vladikavkaz, but these twenty kilometers in the deep gorge of the Guadamakari river take longer to do than the eighty leading there from Tbilisi. The village, which in recent years was abandoned by most of its residents, is inhabited by about thirty persons, including Bacho Tsiklauri, the last student of the elementary school. His two teachers, who also started their careers in this school, the Georgian and math teacher Lia and the English teacher Inga now prepares only him for the upper school four kilometers away, where he will go in next year. Then this school will close.

Some of these pictures, taken by David Mdzinarishvili in June, have already appeared on the net, but the Russian Lenta published the entire series just now, for the school start. Beside the harrowing story, the stunning scenery and the rundown locations, or rather above all these, the most beautiful in them are the many faces of the vivid and smart boy, as he walks alone on the difficult path of growing up, just like that other, similarly lonely boy just a few mountain ranges from here in Semih Kaplanoğlu’s film Honey (2010). It would be so good if he had luck.