SYNOPSIS
The film unfolds around Gonga and his cousin Bart, who find rusty crosses in a Tbilisi junkyard and transform them into fluorescent neon artworks. As they begin door-to-door sales on the city's outskirts, they encounter a world of marginalized communities, including transgender individuals and Roma families. Through these unexpected alliances, the film becomes a delicate inquiry into resilience, faith, and community, culminating in a poetic finale.
REVIEW
Like a magic trick that turns a rusted iron cross into a luminous neon ornament, director Tato Kotetishvili’s stylish fable The Holy Electric transforms Tbilisi, Georgia, into a vivid landscape of fantasy. After the death of her father, the protagonist and her cousin Bart scour a local junk shop for hidden treasures. Rather than following a single narrative, the film drifts through a sequence of character-driven vignettes—sometimes focused on the pair’s adventures, at other times on entirely new figures. Tracing their alchemical journey of turning iron into gold, the film adopts a loose, fluid structure, capturing the heart of Tbilisi through a mood-based, observational lens.
A portrait of a layered city alive with eccentric personalities, Holy Electric fuses dreamy electronic music, striking cinematography, and flashes of absurdity into a singular hybrid form. As radiant as its shimmering cross, the film uncovers the bright, sweet, and surreal side of the metropolis—so often depicted as dark and solemn—through small relationships and everyday moments. Kotetishvili seeks out the marginalized and overlooked, listening to their stories and transmuting them into subjects of pure artistic expression.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
In Holy Electricity, I want to use my personal observations to com ent on religion as opposed to religious institutions without being judgmental. Humor is the best way to talk about these issues in a more lenient manner, reaching out to all people without offending their private religious feelings.
