13 Tzameti (2005)

Gela Babluani's stunning debut feature was made when he was only twenty-six years old, and he's only made one full length since. It's a real shame we've not seen more from the Georgian director, 13 Tzameti is packed with promise and flies along at some speed. Shot in black and white, the film throws you straight into the life of Sebastian (Gela's brother George), a Georgian immigrant builder in France who's repairing the roof of a house lived in by the strange Godon and his wife. We witness snippets of conversation between the married couple which suggest some strange goings on, and without doubt criminal activity. Godon is clearly in some sort of financial trouble, as well as being under surveillance by the police and when he dies of an overdose, his widow is unable to pay Sebastian for his work. Quietly enraged by this, Sebastien steals an envelope that held instructions for a job that Godon was supposedly going to bag potentially big money from (Sebastien overhears a conversation discussing the envelope whilst on the roof) without having any idea what the job is. He follows the instructions in the envelope, and travels to a location where he is picked up by a man in a car and driven to a large house in the middle of a forest. What follows is a an utterly gripping hour or so- the 'job' that Sebastien has unwittingly signed himself up for is essentially a game of Russian Roulette with willing (or unwilling) participants standing in a circle, pointing a gun at the person in front of them, and pulling the trigger- a bullet has been loaded into the cylinder and then randomly spun. The game is then replayed with survivors, and the whole thing plays out like the most sickening game of knockout you'll ever see, with huge sums of money being bet on the players by various nefarious characters attending the event. There's no backstory for Sebastien and no rhyme nor reason to what's happening in front of us but this actually makes the whole thing more hard hitting. You don't question what or why because you're so gripped by what's unfolding. 13 Tzameti is as much about gambling as it the shortness of life and the idea of chance- Sebastien's decision originally made through some sense of revenge and perhaps even desperation plants him in a death match whilst being followed by the police. Babluani's film is all the more stark for being black and white; it gives it a much rawer feel to proceedings but also connotes the idea of life and death- although opposites of each other, 13 suggests how close the two things are and how quickly and brutally one can become the other. 8.4/10