The Loneliest Planet

Director: Julia Lokter

2011

21 July 2025

See

Alex (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Nica (Hann Furstenberg) are an engaged couple in Georgia, hiking through the Caucauses mountains. They hire Dato (Dizina Gujabidze) as their local trail guide. When things go wrong there’s a push/pull of whether they’re drawn closer together or driven apart. 

Think

Adapted from a short story Expensive Trips Nowhere in God Lives in St Petersberg by Tom Bissell. He also wrote the book The Disaster Artist is based upon, and was a writer on Andor, the prequel series to Rouge One, starring Diego Luna, Barcia Bernal’s costar from Y Tu Mama Tambien. As for this film’s relationship, how well can you get to know your partner on such a trip? More than you might want to. There’s a confused body shield/shielding your partner scene that leaves them shaken. And a fireside moment reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Fancis Macomber. 

Feel

The setting is stunning, especially the static establish shots of the landscape as the trio traverse vast green spaces, scored to Georgian folk music. Dato’s storytelling is worthy of a Tamada toast master, from his tidbits about plants and rocks, to a joke about castrasion, to the toast about children.