Director Levan Akin and rising star Levan “Gelly” Gelbakhiani delve into the drama behind Georgia’s first explicitly gay-themed film

Words Thomas Stichbury

BY GEORGIAN: Levan, seated, and Gelly

Photography Markus Bidaux

If you’re making a gay movie and commit to including some sad-eyed shirt-sniffing in it, you better do it well because 2005 tear-jerker Brokeback Mountain still casts a huge plaidpatterned shadow over the LGBTQ cinematic landscape — we wish we knew how to quit you, Jack. So, huge props go to director Levan Akin for rising to the challenge in his new (cowboy-free) film And Then We Danced, in which a stand-out moment sees one of the main characters take a mighty whiff of his lover’s clothes. “I’ve sniffed some t-shirts in my life,” he teases.

Attitude meets Levan and his leading man Levan Gelbakhiani (who helpfully goes by the nickname Gelly) to discuss the coming-of-age tale about the sexual awakening of young dancer Merab (Gelly), a member of the National Georgian Ensemble, whose life spins in an unexpected direction when he falls for his charming twinkle-toed rival, Irakli (Bachi Valishvili).

Dazzling at Cannes last year, where Levan was nominated for the Queer Palm prize, And Then We Danced raises the barre (sorry…) as the first explicitly gay-themed feature to come out of the former Soviet republic, Georgia. “There is one [other] movie that is super down-low and art-house,” Levan clarifies, adding with a flash of a mischievous grin: “[directed by a] Lynch wannabe.” Located in the mountainous Caucasus, Georgia has an appropriately rocky track record when it comes to queer rights. Although homosexuality is legal there, the country ranks as the third most homophobic on the planet, according to the World Values Survey.