13 Tzameti Reviews

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“…13 Tzameti is a must see, nouvelle-Noir masterpiece.”
-Jennifer Merin, New York Press

“By the end… audiences will need mass manicures.”
-John Anderson, Newsday

“Babluani is an absolutely ferocious director with a superlative ability—let’s call it an innate knack, in deference to his filmmaker-father, the redoubtable Temur Babluani—to stage unbearably taut spectacles of human suffering, creating the ultimate paradox: I couldn’t watch, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.”
-James Crawford, for Indiewire

“A dastardly nugget of neonoir nastiness, Georgian director Géla Babluani’s debut starts out with a Hitchcock-worthy premise: An immigrant handyman (George Babluani, the director’s brother) in France, desperate for income, takes a job that involves fixing the roof of a gentleman (Passon) in ill health. Shady characters come and go, lurking about the perimeter of the house or asking enigmatic questions: something about a letter, a business opportunity, a mint to be made. When the client dies before paying him, the worker takes the mysterious document and passes himself off as the recipient. The young man is given a number—lucky 13—and an address. He shows up. And then…”
-David Fear, Time Out New York

“Babluani… aces the way simple images can make the most of a simple story, and the way it’s possible to trap audiences inside the head of a desperate man by giving them nowhere else to go.”
-Tasha Robinson, The Onion

“Beautifully shot in widescreen black and white, the film works best as a nightmarish vision of male aggression that doesn’t particularly hold up to narrative scrutiny. Thankfully devoid of the ironic humor that so often seems to permeate these sorts of efforts, it manages to sustain its noirish intensity for the duration of its 93-minute running time.”
-Frank Sheck, Hollywood Reporter

“As a brutal metaphor for the global economy, 13 Tzameti takes care of business; its assertion that desperate means require desperate measures naturally extends to the hair-trigger world of genre filmmaking, wherein young Babluani did what he had to do.”
-Rob Nelson, The Village Voice

“If you long for early ‘50s noir, with a little bit of ultraviolence thrown in, here’s your ticket. This low-budget black-and-white thriller is irresistibly appalling, throwing a vaguely sympathetic émigré workman in a French seaport city into a maelstrom of violence that you have to see (or not, if you have a weak stomach) to believe. The characters that Sebastien, our not quite innocent protagonist, meets on the way to his fateful denouement are out of Fellini on bad acid, making 13 Tzameti both vaguely familiar and thoroughly new.
-Howard Karren, Premiere Maazine

“This diabolical thriller, filmed in inky black and white, is as cold and sharp as razor blades stored in a subzero freezer. The director and screenwriter stars as Sebastien, a lean and hungry roofer in his early 20’s from Georgia, the former Soviet republic, living in France. After surreptitiously pocketing a mysterious letter to a drug addict who dies of an overdose, he follows its directions to a secluded manor much like the site of the masked orgies in “Eyes Wide Shut.” Here he finds himself compelled to participate in a sophisticated variation of Russian roulette in which gamblers place bets on who will live and who will die in ritualized round-robin shootings; the hair-raising game culminates in a duel. The movie offers the ultimate comment on the depraved male appetite for dangerous thrills. It’s extreme sports times 10, realized with the ruthless, smirking sang-froid of early Roman Polanski.
-STEPHEN HOLDEN, NY TIMES

“A thriller of starkly economic proportions …come the end credits, fingernails will be firmly embedded in armrests… the film turns on a dime, forcing the cock-sure Sebastien into a simple yet deadly game that blends echoes of The Vanishing and Takeshi Miike at his most depraved… Georgian-born director Babluani works like a prize fighter, distracting attention with one hand before slamming home with the other, and the clinical black and white photography only adds to the nightmare.”
-Jamie Wooley, BBC - 4 Stars

“What begins as a wry comedy turns into an austere, intense art-house twist on “Hostel,” an urban legend nightmare that takes its toll on the psyche and the soul. Director Gela Babluani creates tension with an austere style and coldly matter-of-fact camera eye and drives the film with a measured yet crisp pace that makes his ordeal feel out-of-control and achingly protracted.
-Sean Axmaker, Seattle PI - Grade: A-

“… (Think The Deer Hunter, with maybe a smidge of Audition. In other words, we’re talking a sphincter factor of about 11.) Gela Babluani’s debut, gorgeously shot in black and white, augments a classic suspense set-up with some exquisitely grueling nu-school sadism…” “Don’t Miss!” -ndrew Wright, The Stranger

“…masterful use of tension… Babluani does an incredible job of building a mounting sense of dread. Shot in high-contrast black and white, every forbidding location and intimidating face Sebastien encounters helps to crank the tension up an extra notch.”
-Scott Hunter, Las Vegas Weekly - 4 stars

“Best of the Batch (LA Film Festival)” “This French feature from first-time Georgian filmmaker Gela Babluani is a tight, focused suspense film… nail-biting”
-Andy Klein, LA City Beat

“The festival’s real gem is “13 (Tzameti),” a prizewinner at both the 2005 Sundance and Venice film festivals. Though it opens in Boston soon, this is a chance to see one of the year’s best thrillers . First-time director Gela Babluani, who’s Georgian ( “ tzameti ” means “13” in his native tongue) , made the film on a lean, mean budget, in crisp black and white, and in a style reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Melville and early Roman Polanski. Except for the late-model Volkswagen Beetles on the street, you’d almost think you were back in early 1960s gangster noir. The hero is a down-and-out laborer (George Babluani) who overhears a conversation about big money to be made in a high-stakes gambling club. Pilfering an invitation, he finds himself a contestant in a deadly game. How far will he go to win? To survive? Where films such as “Fight Club” and “Hostel” pander to viewers’ appetite for dangerous thrills, “13 ( Tzameti ) ” goes for psychological suspense. The result is mesmerizing.”
-Justine Elias, Boston Globe