Tangerines is a 2013 Georgian-Estonian film, directed by Zaza Urushadze, and nominated for a 2014 Oscar (not to be confused with 2015’s Tangerine about a transgender sex worker). The film is set in Abkhazia, a region of Georgia that fought a stalemate of a war for its independence in the early ‘90’s. Chechen mercenaries and local Abkhazians fought against Georgian troops. A number of the local residents were Estonian, most of whom returned to Estonia when the conflict broke out.
The film centers on 4 individuals: 2 Estonians who remained, Ivo, an elderly carpenter who is making crates for his neighbor, Margus, a tangerine grower, who intends to hold on until he can harvest his almost ripe crop; and two soldiers on opposing sides, one Chechen and one Georgian, who survive a local skirmish, badly wounded. Ivo takes them into his house and nurses them back to health. They each are committed to kill the other, delayed only by Ivo’s extraction of a promise that they won’t do it in his house.
The film focuses, first on the question of why Ivo and Margus have stayed (clearer for Margus), and then the evolving relationships between the soldiers and among the four of them. Over all this is the film’s real center: war, its destructiveness and unpredictability, and ultimately its inhumane foolishness.
While not a great movie, it’s a very good one, delivers quite a strong and universal anti-war message (I thought it ranks among the finer of that category), is well acted, captures a very realistic sense of life in Abkhazia, and is well worth the time to watch it.