Rezo Chkheidze

The ravages of war go under the microscope in this moving film, directed by Rezo Chkheidze and first released in the 1965, about Giorgi Makharashvili (Sergo Zaqariadze), a peasant who travels to see his injured son at a hospital. When he gets there, he discovers that his son, a soldier, has been treated and sent back to the front. Giorgi decides to follow him there and witnesses the battle against fascism. (Netflix)

This chamber drama is set in Georgia on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A simple peasant family makes its living by selling yogurt which the Magdany widow takes every morning to the town market. Once, in their mother's absence, the children - six-year-old Mikho and three-year-old Kato - found an abandoned donkey on a road leading to their village. The foundling was fed, tended, and the moment the donkey opened its big, tender eyes, it was named "Lurdja", which means "blue-eyed".