Supporting Role | Screening at BFI London Film Festival 2026

One of the great aspects of cinema is the opportunity to reach in and discover stories created by different cultures, with different ideals and different circumstances.

The London Film Festival is great at cultivating such a concept, showing films from all over the world and in the case of Supporting Role, that part of the world is Tbilisi, Georgia. Supporting Role follows the journey of an aging film actor named Niaz whose career is in decline and his relationships fractured, when he’s offered a supporting part in a young woman’s debut feature film he’s reluctant and ventures on a journey of reflection on the man he was and the man he is now. Ana Urushadze’s film premiered as part of the Rotterdam International Film Festival and is now being screened as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

As a film about an actor may tell you, Supporting Role places a great reliance on the shoulders of its star in Dato Bakhtadze as Niaz. Niaz isn’t necessarily the most charming of protagonists, he’s arrogant, closed off and miserable for a good portion of the runtime but Bakhtadze takes these challenges for the audience and makes them his strength in performance. For a time, Niaz is not a pleasant character to be following and this makes it quite hard to care for the problems he is facing, but as the narrative becomes more expansive and we learn to see that Niaz’s story might be more tragic than first thought, Dato Bakhtadze becomes an intriguing protagonist that’s able to keep the plot moving even at a slow and steady pace. Just as the title suggests, there’s also a large ensemble of supporting roles that help to shape and manipulate Niaz’s journey. The entire cast does well but an issue is that we’re dropped into these relationships with little to no context and that sometimes betrays the film, making it hard to gauge where we’re supposed to sit emotionally. Letting these conversations wash over the viewer works some of the time but other times it can’t help but make us feel not only lost in terms of the story but also in terms of where we sit with our protagonist.

The film’s major issue comes when talking about the pacing. Supporting Role moves along at a lethargic pace, this sometimes works, Ana Urushadze implements some moments of surrealism that allow this plodding pace to feel dreamlike but at other times it leaves the viewer feeling lost on where any of this is actually going. Supporting Role is a film of many themes, at times it feels Urushadze is giving a commentary on the film industry, at others an exploration of masculinity and at others a deconstruction of the messiness of personal relationships. The problem is Supporting Role feels like it can’t spin all those plates at once, they interweave and mangle until by the film’s end it’s not entirely clear what the filmmaker is actually exploring. It’s never a bore, nor is it a pain to look at, it just seems to meander one too many times. In fact the cinematography of Rein Kotov is a highlight, lighting the nocturnal journey with dramatic shape and making use of colour to vary things up.

Supporting Role’s closest comparison is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours but what the film lacks is the energy Scorsese pulsates into every character and scenario as well as the short sharp runtime of 97 minutes. Supporting Role would benefit from a sleeker runtime alongside a more focused approach to the central themes. Urushadze shows her ambition and I highly anticipate her next outing, Bakhtadze’s hard faced performance gives the film a nice throughline, and there are moments of brilliance, the narrative just needed a little more support.

Catch Supporting Role at this year’s BFI London Film Festival for Bakhtadze’s performance alone, EyeOnLondon would ask for a tighter edit next time.

For more London arts and culture, visit EyeOnLondon at eye-on-london.com.

[Image Credit | Allfilm]

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