At the Akhtala spa in Georgia, visitors from across the region come to undergo treatments with natural mud with healing properties. During the summer, five-year-old Tako spends her days waiting for her grandmother, who works at the spa washing the linen sheets used for the treatments. The repetition of everyday life becomes an opportunity for the child to create her own imaginary universe, populated by fantastic characters born from local legends and stories about the Mud Man. What Does the Mud Whisper? is a poetic observation of childhood and the power of imagination, capable of transforming ordinary reality into a space of dreams, where the landscape, traditions, and stories of the place continue to live through a child’s eyes

Dea Tcholokava is a Georgian filmmaker with an academic background in social and political sciences, cinema, and fiction filmmaking. What Does the Mud Whisper? is her debut film, premiered at Dok Leipzig