Directors George Varsimashvili and Jeanne Nouchi have made a wistful documentary observing the residents of the dishevelled, elegantly crumbling former sanatorium of the title, located in Georgia. Once a splendid Soviet-era resort hotel with a typically socialist name celebrating industry and labour, the Metalurg has for the last 30 years housed refugees from Abkhazia, the site of a proxy war fought between Georgia and Russian-backed forces. Like Nagorno-Karabakh to the east in Azerbaijan, which has recently been in the news, the Abkhazian conflict has its roots in the Soviet Union’s collapse, and has been fanned by Putin’s neo-imperialist ambitions. But you don’t need to know any of that to find this film quietly moving as it explores the never-ending sense of displacement, nostalgia and melancholy that the residents of the Metalurg experience. Gradually it emerges that most of the menfolk cleared off some time ago and the majority of the residents are single mothers, widows and children. One woman shares a single bed with her 10-year-old football-mad son, and has a job in a municipal garden that doesn’t pay well but allows her to spend time with him. He, in turn, clearly loves his mum but longs for the company of other children and spends the lonely hours of his summer days chasing a half-flat football down the grand staircase of the hotel. Another elderly resident, confused by dementia, has been offered somewhere else to live in the nearby town but keeps coming back to the Metalurg thinking her next stop will be her hometown back in Abkhazia. Meanwhile a steady stream of newly married couples keep showing up to have their wedding portraits taken in the empty ballrooms or beneath the massive chandeliers as light falls photogenically across the chipped parquetry. Presumably the newlyweds find the faded glory of the sanatorium romantic somehow, but through the lens of the documentary-makers the posing and simpering for the cameras just looks surreal. The residents look on from a distance, discussing who has been the most attractive-looking couple of the day, and recalling happier times years earlier back home – like the time one of them spotted Jean-Claude Van Damme at a local film festival. It’s all so unbearably sad that it comes as a huge relief when we see some of the families make it out of the Metalurg and find safe haven in brutalist highrise housing across town, where at least there are other kids to play with. Hotel Metalurg is released on 6 October at Bertha Dochouse, London.