THE PORT THAT NEVER WAS
CREDITS:
111 min. / HD (cinema)
99 min. / 56 min. / 15 min. / HD
© Filmpunkt GmbH
Germany 2022
Director
Stefan Tolz
In coproduction with
ZDF
In cooperation with
ARTE and PHOENIX
Camera
Nik Voigt
Alex Jaffar
Thomas Riedelsheimer
Stefan Tolz
Marcus Winterbauer
Sound
Niko Tarielashvili
Edit
Stefan Tolz
Manuela Kempf
Lena Rem
Lika Daushvili
Mix
Tomas Bastian
Filmsound Murnau
Graphics
Irakli Gharibashvili
Image Finishing
Fabian Spang Postproduction
Commissioning editor
Susanne Mertens
Martin Pieper
ARTE Geopolitics
Claudia Bucher
Anne-Laure Negrin
The construction of Anaklia’s new container port at Georgia’s Black Sea coast as a strategic trading point of the new Silk Road gives rise to high expectations regarding the country’s economic prospects.
Highlighting the repercussions for both the initiator of the port’s consortium and Anaklia’s citizens, the film portrays how the revived trading route affects Georgia’s society and economy. Will this strategic connection to the global trading network help the small and poor country to become an important economic player?
This was the intention of filmmaker Stefan Tolz when he started to follow the Anaklia project in 2017.
Though in 2019, when Mamuka Khazaradze, the mastermind behind the consortium in charge for building the port, gets accused of money laundering by the authorities, events take a different turn.
As the allegations come right at a time when the consortium is negotiating with international investors and money lenders to co-finance the port, speculations run high that Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man, might be the force behind it all. Ivanishvili, who founded the ruling party “Georgian Dream” and is said to be in control of all major decisions in the country, had made his fortune in Russia and is well connected in Moscow.
Is he interfering because Russians are opposing the Anaklia port as it would be a serious competition to their own harbor in Noworossijsk? Khazaradze runs the consortium with American business partners: did Putin fear an American-controlled port at the Eastern shores of the Black Sea, which he sees as part of Russia’s reserved zone of influence?
Or is the Anaklia project simply too expensive to build with the existing smaller port in Poti big enough to handle the cargo expected to be transported via the “middle corridor” from Central Asia to Europe?
This documentary turns into a political thriller, keeping a close eye on its protagonists over a period of five years. It exemplifies the chances and the obstacles for all those countries, which officially claim independence, but are still under strong influence from Russia.
With Putin’s attack on Ukraine THE PORT THAT NEVER WAS has become a historical document showing that people’s hopes to join the West through building strategic economic connections can be undermined by ‘soft power’, not only by the means of war.
CREDITS:
111 min. / HD (cinema)
99 min. / 56 min. / 15 min. / HD
© Filmpunkt GmbH
Germany 2022
Director
Stefan Tolz
In coproduction with
ZDF
In cooperation with
ARTE and PHOENIX
Camera
Nik Voigt
Alex Jaffar
Thomas Riedelsheimer
Stefan Tolz
Marcus Winterbauer
Sound
Niko Tarielashvili
Edit
Stefan Tolz
Manuela Kempf
Lena Rem
Lika Daushvili
Mix
Tomas Bastian
Filmsound Murnau
Graphics
Irakli Gharibashvili
Image Finishing
Fabian Spang Postproduction
Commissioning editor
Susanne Mertens
Martin Pieper
ARTE Geopolitics
Claudia Bucher
Anne-Laure Negrin