Magic Mountain

The walls of the old Abastumani palace are crumbling, some parts are uninhabitable, and the rooms where people still live are also in disrepair. But life goes on, albeit sometimes on the edge between life and death.

Georgian filmmaker Mariam Chachia first heard about the Abastumani sanatorium in the southwest of the country when she herself contracted tuberculosis. The center treats patients with infectious TB who don’t respond to antibiotics. Fortunately, Chachia recovered after treatment with medication at home, but the idea of staying in the remote sanatorium continued to haunt her. Her solution to rid herself of the nightmares was to make a film about it.

She spends five years off and on as part of the sanatorium’s miniature society and discovers that the nature of the residents, who often stay there for years, is less serious than their illness and the half-ruin they inhabit would suggest. In a sinister twist, this also becomes a story about how this place and its patients are connected to the history of Georgia.