Set against the backdrop of the 2007 crackdown on democracy in Georgia, the film follows activists Anna Dolidze and Irakli Kakabadze as they return to their native country to shine a light on the violence and corruption of President Saakashvili’s regime and take part in monitoring his controversial reelection. Irakli Kakabadze is a novelist, poet and highly renowned political activist who played a key role in the Rose Revolution. His wife, Anna Dolidze, is a human rights lawyer and the former chair of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association. Both were forced to flee to the U.S. in 2006 to escape repeated harassment, imprisonment and beatings.

Nathan, I more-or-less agree with your take on this. In the protesters’ favour is that Saakashvili doesn’t have much support left, either in the country or outside it. If they did force him out, I doubt the US or Europe would complain much (nor would Russia, although they seem more interested in stirring shit than in who rules, and Russian blessing is hardly a benefit in Georgia).

If they had found some target other than removing Saakashvili, they would have a decent chance. But he clearly won last year’s elections, dominates parliament, and is still a far bigger figure than any of his opponents. It’s hard to tell from outside the country, but I don’t have the sense that even Irakli Alasania has the status to be the figurehead for a revolution.

We had the McCain-Obama debate on. At the bohemian Greenwich Village brownstone of our friend Ann Marlowe, the leading literary salonista of our time, Misha ate and watched and greeted a stream of well-wishers. Upstairs, Owen and I debated the Russia/Georgia matter. He had just penned a quasi-sympathetic large profile of Misha in Newsweek. I had just published a story in TheWall Street Journal, the first to detail the destruction of Georgian cultural sites during the recent invasion.

I can’t fathom why people still persist in calling Georgia the victim of that war.