Alumnus George Sikharulidze '17 was selected for the Cannes Film Festival's Cinéfondation residency, which runs through February 2019.
His previous shorts include The Fish that Drowned, which he wrote and directed in Georgia in 2014. The short was selected at the Palm Springs and Clermont-Ferrand Film Festivals.
After receiving the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Grant, Sikharulidze went on to direct Red Apples, which was an official selection for the Toronto International Film Festival, won Best Film Award at CUFF, as well as a National Board of Review Student Grant.
An avid editor, Sikharulidze has collaborated on many films, including editing the short film Submarine, which was selected at the 69th Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation. In 2017, he made the short, A New Year, which had its international premier at the Toronto Film Festival.
In an interview with The New Current, George said that while writing a feature, “a scene emerged out of nowhere” and it was a "story [that] stuck with me for 16 years."
Sikharulidze hails from Tbilisi, Georgia. He moved to the United States at the age of 18 to study at New York University. Earning a B.S. in Media Studies, he graduated summa cum laude and went on to earn his MFA from Columbia. When not directing, Sikharulidze has taught filmmaking at both Northwestern and Columbia, where he was nominated for the Presidential Award for Outstanding teaching.