★★★★☆
This documentary on a woman claiming to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mother tells a larger story about post-Soviet Georgia.
In the Georgian village of Metekhi, located a little over an hour’s drive from Tbilisi, there is no local cinema. Instead, families gather around the TV for entertainment. It was on one such screen in 1999 that local resident Vera Putina first saw then-newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man she believed to be her long-lost son Vova.
In 2002, Dutch director Ineke Smits travelled to Metekhi to follow Vera and cover her story. Yet anyone expecting a journalistic investigation into Putin’s biological mother will find no answers here. Smits is not interested in establishing the facts or uncovering a political scandal. Perhaps that is why she was still able to attend the screening of her film at the 2026 Kutaisi International Short Film Festival more than two decades later (two journalists with plans to interview Vera reportedly ‘died in mysterious circumstances’).
What is recounted is Vera’s marriage to a Georgian soldier in the 1950s and his dislike of her first child, Vova, leading her to send him to live with her grandparents in Russia. Eventually, the boy was taken to an orphanage, and Vera did not see him again until viewing Putin on TV.
Putin’s Mama is a catchy title, but the film is really about personal loss, a nuanced portrait of a woman who never gave up hope of reconnecting with her first child. The delicate cinematography captures the melancholy of an elderly woman looking back on her past decisions, many of which she now regrets. It is a film about the life you chose once but can no longer quite remember why.
In one scene, Vera sits by a window listening to the radio. She turns up the volume, the camera moves closer to her face, and Kylie Minogue’s voice fills the room.
‘It’s in your eyes
I can tell what you’re thinking
My heart is sinking, too
It’s no surprise
I’ve been watching you lately
I want to make it with you’.
Beyond Vera’s wistful portrait, the film offers a bleak picture of rural Georgian life, almost an ethnographic portrait of post-Soviet Georgia. Alongside Vera, we get to know her family members, who cook together; neighbours, who love showing off in front of the camera; and fellow villagers, who have plenty to say about her. The film’s sorrowful scenes alternate with traditional Georgian feasts, where some of its most ludicrous moments unfold: drunk men raising toasts to Putin, taking pride in him as one of their own. It is likely this sentiment has shifted since the August 2008 War, yet still, the scene reflects a longer legacy of admiration for strongmen, including Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, whose Georgian origins remain a source of pride for some.
At times, the camera leaves Vera’s home, instead following local children as they play near the river Mtkvari. Their faces covered in mud, they hunt for frogs, turtles, and fish. This parallel perspective is reminiscent of Lucrecia Martel’s astonishing film La ciénaga, or The Swamp, where children inhabit a world marked by the stagnation and decay of the adults around them. While Smits studies adults whose lives were shaped by the Soviet Union, she also captures a present that feels like the remnants of that era. But she is interested in glimpses of the future, too. Watching those kids with oversized ripped clothes makes me wonder whether this generation might finally find a way out of the swamp.
Film details: Putin’s Mama (2003) directed by Ineke Smits, screened at the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival on 17 October 2026. It is also available to stream on YouTube with English subtitles.