The feature debut by the Georgian director Dmitri Mamulia is an exercise in “slow cinema”, a pure cinematic experience without a reliance on dialogue and an emphasis on visual expression. The story of a farmer somewhere in Central Asia who goes on a quest to look for his missing wife is handled in an evocative and sometimes evasive way. We learn very little in the way of traditional exposition (though a lot is revealed through images). The film is a feeling rather than an action. This makes it a commendable effort from a first-timer who appears to be on the right track.

It remains to be seen if the slow cinema trend is nothing more than a auteurist fad or pose. The truth is that it seems this particular aesthetic has become a shorthand for filmmakers hoping to be taken as “serious” by the critical community. I don’t dislike the aesthetic itself, just its homogenization as one-size-fits-all. We would do better to have a new generation of international directors who cannot all be lumped into the same category but rather work in true individual expression and the cultural specificity of their native background.

Is “Another Sky” a good film? It’s not bad. It just perhaps would need to do a bit more to stand apart from the masses on the festival circuit. It needs to dig deeper, to follow its titular directive by reaching higher and in a different direction.

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