Writer and Director: Ana Urushadze
Writer-director Ana Urushadze tells an epic life story in almost a single stream of consciousness that actually takes place across seven days or so as an actor contemplates a comeback opportunity with a young new director. Revisiting different and crucial elements of his life during this time in an episodic but engaging production, Supporting Role has the tone of a swansong, a shadow of death looming over Niaz’s life and career, but what Urushadze is really interested in is the possibility of rebirth.
Out of work for 15-years, the reclusive Niaz is selected by an up-and-coming director to play a supporting role in her new film. Unsure whether to take the risk with only a storyboard and no script so far, Niaz ventures back to the people he has known best. Recognised everywhere he goes his public are keen to re-engage but not everyone in his life is so pleased to see him or even still available.
Supporting Role is a very long film, a Georgian epic running for the best part of 2 hours and 30-minutes. And in that extended time, there are no big action sequences, no grand set pieces or even a plot as such, but there is command in the series of unfolding conversations and encounters that take Naiz through his story and through the movie. And the deeper you go through the film, the more you want to know as he visits former lovers, old friends, drama teachers and strangers, each recovering a different side of him, building the man and the star reputation that he seems unable to shake.
It is a big commitment of time but the young director wants Niaz to play a creature that sheds its skin and the overall effect of Supporting Role is designed to do the same, having Niaz visit all those past selves and relationships to make peace with who he is, to reach a kind of rock bottom of self-awareness and isolation so he can start again. Mentions of death pepper the dialogue, but Urushadze is not as literal as that, exploring the deaths of ego, moral, personal and spiritual versions of the self so that something different (not necessarily better or worse) can take its place.
Led by Dato Bakhtadze in a consuming central performance, Niaz is a man and an actor who has lived a complicated and involved life which has now all but deserted him, and Bakhtadze radiates loss and abandonment. Surrounded essentially by a series of cameos, this may not be attention-grabbing cinema, but Supporting Role is thoughtful. It could certainly lose an encounter or two with little detriment to the overall direction, but Urushadze’s film is an honest reflection on what happens when the limelight fades away.
Supporting Role is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
