Ramin

Ramin is doubtless Audrius Stonys' best known film, perhaps because it is often perceived as a sort of "sports documentary". Its protagonist, Ramin Losadze, was a champion in georgian wrestling who obtained a legendary status in the field by defeating seven champions under a minute. It is a film that in certain aspects feels a bit distant from the core interests of the cinema of Audrius Stonys, but only apparently: several of his short films were centered on solitary, often elderly figures, and Ramin fits in this collection of characters.

Opening on a portrait of Ramin as he sleeps, the film by Audrius Stonys immediately estabilishes an oniric dimension. Alterning a sequence of Ramin on a train, with snippets from unrelated moments, the non-linearity that characterises the first minutes of the film seems to suggest as if everything that happens in the film is a dream of the protagonist himself. A rather creative concept: to articulate a sort of fiction or a metaphysical dimension through documentary filmmaking. It is something that Stonys already did in Uku Ukai on a shorter scale, suggesting that the film was a meditative suggestion of three days in the life of an elderly woman, including her dreams, but in Ramin, this plays on a much larger scale. 

While it is commonly accepted that documentary is an artifice, very rarely it is suggested as a tool to evocate a realm that cannot be photographed, like that of dreams. If Stonys more commonly employs this form of filmmaking to capture the spiritual essence of existence, in Ramin there is less room for such a dimension, being the character not immensely concerned with such questions himself.  The dreamlike incipit of the feature film allows to elevate a subject to a metaphysical level.

Slowly, the film unfolds in a more linear pattern, eventually consolidating first in an observational sequence, as it witnesses a birthday celebration thrown as a surprise by Ramin's old students, then in an inquiry. Ramin's quest for his youth sweetheart soon reminds of The Bell, the second feature film by Stonys, a search that goes nowhere, but that has the value of allowing to provide insight into the character of the protagonist. 

A travel that becomes a pretext  to get a larger glimpse of Georgia, to capture its unique landscapes. The story of Ramin becomes larger than his life, his search, an exploration of the country itself, of its cultural reality. Stonys has been previously fascinated by the georgian identity when he presented a georgian emigrant in his short film Apostle of Ruins.

Ramin lacks the spirituality of other films by Stonys, but trades it with another interesting concept: that of oniricism in documentary cinema, the possibility that such a film can be constructed beyond the boundaries that constitute the mere reproduction of a reality.

RATING: 4/5

Original title: Raminas

Directed by: Audrius Stonys

Country: Georgia, Lithuania

Year: 2011

Length: 58 min.

Premiere: /

Availability: Da Films

Synopsis: Ramin Losadze is a retired georgian wrestler, world champion, as he puts it.  He conducts a lonely life, seemely forgotten by most. Following his birthday, he decides to look for a woman from his youth.