When you want proof of how far the worldwide steadiness has been tilted in favour of the super-rich, look no additional than the operation to uproot, transport and replant dozens of full-grown timber to fulfill the whim of a billionaire who fancies having them in his non-public backyard. No rationalization is given in Salomé Jashi’s stealthily provocative and unflinchingly compelling documentary for the will to personal a dendrological park. However the villagers having their pure belongings stripped have their very own views on why their one-time prime minister would need to flex his muscle tissue at their expense. One jokes bitterly that he will not be completely satisfied till he is acquired the birds, too.

Opting to view occasions from a discreet distance, Jashi eavesdrops on the grumbling villagers, as they watch the excavation strategies, whose mix of commercial brutality and knowledgeable evisceration quantities to intricacy on an unlimited scale. Using the identical lucid lyricism to document pure magnificence and engineering ingenuity, Goga Devdariani’s camerawork is complemented by sound designer Philippe Ciompi’s deft juxtaposition of woodland hubbub and heavy equipment. The sobering impact is to stress the insensitive ruthlessness of capitalism, because the plunder is loaded onto flatbeds that journey in tandem at a snail’s tempo, to ship their cargo to barges that float together with an enormous tree towering over their deck just like the statue of Lenin that handed down the Danube in Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze.

One can think about Lenin spinning in his mausoleum at this flaunting of wealth and abuse of energy. However Jashi is just too astute to dwell on the wrongs of Ivanishvili’s manufactured paradise, which is potently contrasted on the conclusion with the scarred backwoods panorama. She additionally subtly invitations viewers to think about the ecological results of those transplants, in addition to what they are saying about migration and placing down roots.