We continue the programme “Remember Freedom: Images of Resistance” with a film screening and a conversation with filmmaker Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze.

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze’s work focuses on the moving image and the political contexts that shape its production and circulation. In his films, personal experience meets broader social and historical forces, opening a space to reflect on power, memory, and the conditions under which images are made and seen. The programme will feature two films—one from 2018 and the latest from this year—followed by a conversation with the artist, moderated by film critic and curator Dina Pokrajac.

Graft versus Host (2026) is a speculative documentary essay connecting the filmmaker’s medical history with post–Cold War geopolitical shifts and their impact on contemporary politics. The film originates from the filmmaker’s diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, T-cell lymphoma. This is a condition that causes the failure of the immune system and the body’s defence mechanisms. The medical treatment unfolded in three stages: 1. remission of cancer cells, 2. immune transplantation, and 3. adaptation to a new immune system. The film adopts these three stages as a framework to mirror the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the introduction of the free-market economy as a new system of governance, and a prolonged process of adaptation marked by chronic side effects. Far from claiming that biology offers a model of perfect social order, Graft Versus Host uses medical terminology to grasp complex geopolitical transformations of recent history and the layered roots of today’s unsettling political reality.

The Invisible Hand of My Father (2018) is a film based on the personal life of Gago’s father, Nugzari, and his right hand, which has played a crucial role in his economic and social life, serving as a constant source of financial stability for his family. The film traces both the physical and symbolic transformation of his right hand and how this transformation has affected his socio-economic life throughout his journey across different political ideologies, each represented by symbolic “hands”: from the Soviet Union, whose ideology claimed that its political body was governed by “the collective hand of the workers,” to global capitalism, whose economic structure is “regulated” by the “invisible hand of the free market.”

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (b. 1983, Kutaisi, USSR/Georgia, currently based in Berlin/Tbilisi) is an artist working with film, animation, and installation. He studied at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (2007) and the Universität der Künste, Berlin (2016). His practice investigates the sociopolitical conditions of moving images, focusing on the impact of global capitalism, labour migration, and poverty on post-Soviet societies.

The screening is part of the film and video programme “Remember Freedom: Images of Resistance.” The programme will be held in English.

Many thanks to the Multimedia Institute.

The program is supported by:
Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb
Kultura Nova Foundation
Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC)