Letters to Max

director: Eric Baudelaire

original title: Letters to Max

country: France

year: 2014

running time: 103 min.

synopsis

Maxim Gvinjia, the former minister of foreign affairs of the breakaway republic of Abkhazia – whose independence from Georgia has been recognized by only a few countries – is a friend of director Eric Baudelaire, who has been writing him from France since 2012. In the film, these letters are presented in text form and Gvinjia’s telephone replies are read in voiceovers. Gvinjia’s personal stories and his reflections upon his nation and its history are accompanied by footage of daily life in Abkhazia, for the most part short and simple snapshots taken by a professional hand-held camera, with no apparent connection to the letters’ contents.

DETAIL:
“The first letter that I received. It’s real letter, it’s wrapped in paper. ‘Dear Max, Are you there? Eric.’ Honestly, I am somewhere. I’m here, I’m in Abkhazia, in my office. It’s a sunny day. It’s eve of independence day.”

biography

A native of Salt Lake City currently living in Paris, Baudelaire is engaged in film, photography, and the visual arts. His feature-length debut The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011), which was also shown in Jihlava, was dedicated to the members of the radical leftist Japanese Red Army. His second film, The Ugly One (2013), which combined documentary elements with fiction, was based on a script by a member of that group, the filmmaker Masao Adachi.

more about film

director:	Eric Baudelaire
cast:	Maxim Gvinjia
producer:	Eric Baudelaire
script:	Eric Baudelaire
photography:	Eric Baudelaire
editing:	Laure Vermeersch, Eric Baudelaire

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