Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze, whose debut Scary Mother won Best First Feature at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival, is preparing her highly anticipated second film Supporting Role. The writer-director is presenting the film this week in the Works-in-Progress section of CineLink Industry Days, the industry branch of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The film is about a once famous star of Georgian cinema who, triggered by a casting with a young director, embarks on a bizarre and fatalistic odyssey of self-transformation. He is used to playing charming heroes and the offer of a supporting role offends him. But gradually, without even realizing it, he begins to put himself in the role and, seemingly unconsciously, accepts the role that has been offered to him.

In conversation with diversity In Sarajevo, Urushadze explained that the inspiration for the film came from auditions for her first feature film, where she was looking for an older man to play the role of the main character’s father. One of the actors who applied was horrified to find out that Urushadze – “a young and inexperienced girl” – was the screenwriter and director, and turned down the role.

“I found this really interesting and started thinking about what his life might have been like and wondering why his ego was hurt,” said Urushadze. “I started looking at the situation from an outside perspective and found the dynamic of this duo really fascinating – a young first-time director and a well-known older actor.”

As Urushadze began to focus on the narrative potential of this character, “the possible themes I could include in the script automatically revealed themselves,” she said, including an “exploration of masculinity and the struggle to find a place in a changing world.” She also addressed a plight that she describes as unfortunately common for Georgian actors.

“We have many incredibly talented actors, but unfortunately almost all of them, with few exceptions, share the same fate: they lead a sad life with low pay, poor health and few new roles – especially film roles – and as a result their talent and enormous potential slowly fade away,” she said.

Veteran Georgian film star Dato Bakhtadze, whose credits include 2004’s Oscar-winning “Crash” and Timur Bekmambetov’s “Ben Hur,” has been chosen for the lead role of Niaz, an ageing actor long accustomed to playing a “heroic, flawless, superhuman character” who “adopted this image in real life and was showered with praise by his fans and widely admired,” the director said.

Although the star returns after a 15-year hiatus dealing with personal problems, “no time has passed for him at all,” said Urushadze. “Due to the severe trauma he went through years ago, he is stuck in the past and believes the outside world has remained the same. But the world has evolved – and so have people – and the type of director he always worked with and felt comfortable with has also changed.”

Alongside Bakhtadze, Nata Murvanidze plays the role of Niaz’s wife, who played the lead role in “Scary Mother” and won Best Actress at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Elene Maisuradze plays Aza, the young director who “holds Niaz’s fate in her hands” and “without realizing it, accelerates the process of self-transformation in him,” says Urushadze.

“Niaz is indeed on a downward trajectory in terms of his career and his life, but overall, watching the film, you realise that he was simultaneously on an upward trajectory all the time in terms of revealing his true self and his true desires.”

The Georgian filmmaker’s widely acclaimed first feature, which follows a middle-aged woman who finds freedom while writing her first novel, won the top prize in Sarajevo in 2017 and was Georgia’s entry for the 90th Academy Awards. In a rave review, she wrote: diversityJessica Kiang of The 40 Fingers described the “darkly daring” film as “a thrillingly offbeat curiosity” and “a stunning debut that fully deserves its place as a prime example of some of the most exciting and distinctive national cinema of recent years.”

“Supporting Role” is produced by Davit Tsintsadze of Zazafilms in Georgia, Ivo Felt of Allfilm in Estonia, Zeynep Atakan of Zeyno Film in Turkey, Andrey Epifanov of Cinetrain in Switzerland, Eleonora Granata Jenkinson of Melograno Films in the USA and Sophio Bedenashvili and Bacho Meburishvili of Enkeny Films and Dato Bakhtadze in Georgia.

The film was shot on location in Georgia by Estonian cinematographer Rein Kotov and was financed by the Georgian National Film Center, the Estonian Film Institute, the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the MEDIA programme of Creative Europe, Eurimages and Cinetrain.

The Sarajevo Film Festival takes place from 16 to 23 August.