New Year’s is the main winter holiday in the post-Soviet world, after the communists took Christmas customs and melded them into the more secular January 1. But Georgia’s mekvle tradition long predates this shift.
The Oscar-nominated “And Then We Danced” faced violent opposition from far right groups, and police were forced to guard theaters throughout the weekend.
From openhanded hospitality to fierce blood feuds, centuries-old customs are fading in Svaneti as the remote Caucasus highland becomes a trendy tourism destination.
The Georgian capital has become a stage set for a Hollywood action flick; some joke that the name of the film franchise is just driving as usual in the city.
Local families rushed to move belongings out of their farmsteads, as masked Russian soldiers began fencing off their property from the rest of Georgia.
The host expressed what many Georgians – and Russians – feel, but many worried that it could unnecessarily escalate the ongoing crisis between the two countries.
Tbilisi’s Russian expat community disputes Moscow’s narrative of a surge of Russophobia in the country, but some say that the ongoing tensions have put them in a complicated place.