“Abkhazia is something of a paradox: a country that exists, in the physical sense of the word (a territory with borders, a government, a flag and a language), yet it has no legal existence because for almost twenty years it was not recognized by any other nation state. And so Abkhazia exists without existing, caught in a liminal space, a space in between realities. Which is why my letter to Max was something of a message in a bottle thrown at sea, a wink to the world of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi that Maxim Gvinjia seems to inhabit. But my letter arrived, and somehow fiction has penetrated the real.”
Eric Baudelaire launched a letter writing campaign sending 74 letters sent over 74 days. This correspondence between himself, and Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of the unrecognized state of Abkhazia, function as a script for the film. The correspondence is read by Maxim, who becomes the narrator of the film. The film documents this exchange with Maxim voiceover accompanied with images that Eric Baudelaire filmed in Abkhazia.
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