PATIENT #1

Georgian director Rezo Gigineishvili finds an striking metaphor for the powerlessness of power in a government hospital. A parable about a society that is consumed by the spirit of subjugation, about powerful people whose power leads to self-deception and ignorance of obvious facts, and a political system that has to artificially keep its symbolic figures alive in order to survive itself. And all of this with a fingertip on the nuclear button. In between is the nurse Sascha, who, being treated disrespectfully by the powerful men in the house, has to exclusively look after the terminally ill Secretary General. From their perspective we experience the dying autocrat's last days. Inspired by the fate of General Secretary Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, who ruled the Soviet Union from February 1984 to March 1985 and spent almost the entire time in hospital, terminally ill with pulmonary emphysema.

In October 2023, this film won the prestigious Werner Herzog Film Prize. The eulogy says: “Rezo Gigineishvili's film shows, only made visible in detail, the final crisis and the impending collapse of an entire empire. His approach is courageous, radical. You want to laugh, but you can't, and you want to cry, but you can't either.“  (Werner Herzog) 

Text: Jörg Taszman/Bernd Buder