We could spend an entire lifespan studying history and still be surprised by some of the random things that happened around the world. That’s what makes Smiling Georgia (Gimiliani Sakartvelo) immediately stand apart from other documentaries as the story of an election campaign that led to the mass removal of voters’ teeth is just too uncanny to be ignored. And yet, the strangeness of its theme is not the best part of Luka Beradze’s movie through which the filmmaker explores how any particular human experience has something universal about it. That’s why, while Smiling Georgia stretches its material too thin, it still deserves your time.

In 2012, before the presidential election in Georgia, the government party launched a daring re-election campaign promising to restore the smile of the population. While that sounds like your average political slogan, former president Mikheil Saakashvili used the words quite literally by sending an army of dentists to restore the rotten teeth of the poorest of the country’s population. That included the elderly people of the “No Name” village who had their teeth ripped out in the weeks before election day. Unfortunately, the opposition won the election, and Saakashvili ultimately dropped his dental operation. As a result, the people of No Name ended up without the dentures they expected to receive and had fewer teeth in their mouths.

The absurdity of such an awkward political moment is explored in Smiling Georgia through the overlapping of archival footage and the documentation of life in No Name eight years after the failed campaign. Through the archival footage, we can see the former president making speeches about how the poor people of Georgia had precarious dental health that prevented them from smiling. The present footage, though, underlines how the elderly of No Name remain unafraid of grinning at life, despite the adversities. Beradze is determined to capture the mundane moments of joy in No Name, showing how the toothless people of the village can still enjoy happy feasts in each other’s company. And if Saakashvili’s removal of teeth for votes couldn’t take the smile out of these people’s faces, what gave him the right to pursue such a barbaric endeavor?

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‘Smiling Georgia’ Take on Politics Is Universal
Image via Image from Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Through lenses that focus on the peaceful everyday life of No Name, Beradze makes a powerful statement about how empty political promises can harm the same people they pretend to help. Furthermore, Smiling Georgia also serves as a documentation of the poverty the rural population of Georgia face and how things remain immutable for the poor masses despite who gets elected. As a result, it also doubles down as a powerful statement about the inability of mediatized politics to solve people’s problems.

Smiling Georgia is not only concerned about the past as the movie also follows the citizens of No Name in the weeks before a new election happened in 2020. Once the new campaign starts, the monotony of the village is suddenly broken by fancy people in suits making long speeches and preaching about the need for electors to unite for the betterment of the country. Of course, all these different parties sell themselves as the solution for the complicated social issues that plague the humble people of No Name. With a lot of good humor, Smiling Georgia shows how empty political campaigns might sound to those who never saw any actual change. In fact, the lives of No Name only got worse after their teeth were pulled out by a president more concerned with his reelection than the well-being of Georgia’s people. It’s no wonder, then, so few people exercise their rights to express themselves in the elections.

While Smiling Georgia leans over a small village in a distant country, the message of the documentary is still important for modern democracy everywhere. After all, we’ve all been suffering from the transformation of political campaigns, with every year feeling more like a popularity contest where the most important thing is going viral. And even if Smiling Georgia could trim some minutes from its already short 62-minute runtime, the documentary is still fun and poignant enough to get us smiling in the end.

Rating: B-

Smiling Georgia had its world premiere at 2023’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.