HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER’S APOCALYPSE Docu Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

FOMO Cinema Presents: The Art of the Documentary

A week of failed productions, obsessive directors and impossible shoots - this week at FOMO is dedicated to the underappreciated art of documentary filmmaking, and to the filmmakers stubborn enough to keep pointing the camera when common sense suggests they should pack it in.

HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE

Fax Bahr, Eleanor Coppola & George Hickenlooper | 1991 | USA | 1h36m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles

HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER’S APOCALYPSE is the definitive documentary about a film production losing control, then somehow turning that collapse into one of the most mythic works in American cinema.

The film follows the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW, a Vietnam War epic whose production became almost as famous as the finished film. Shot in the Philippines, delayed by storms, budget problems, physical exhaustion, casting changes, and Coppola’s own mounting anxiety, the shoot became a symbol of New Hollywood ambition at its most brilliant and most unreasonable.

What makes HEARTS OF DARKNESS so compelling is the access. Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes footage and private recordings capture a production being pulled apart from the inside. Coppola is shown not as a distant master calmly executing a plan, but as a filmmaker trying to hold together money, weather, actors, politics, scale, ego, and his own fear that the film may never work. It’s a portrait of cinema as crisis management, spiritual breakdown, and industrial gamble.

Presented as part of FOMO’s Documentary Week, HEARTS OF DARKNESS is essential cinema-on-cinema viewing. Paired with BURDEN OF DREAMS, it forms one of the great double bills about directors pushing films past the limits of reason. For anyone interested in APOCALYPSE NOW, New Hollywood, impossible productions, or the strange belief that chaos can be edited into greatness, this is about as good as behind-the-scenes cinema gets.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 02:00,.serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol from outside allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to Level 1. Signage on the door. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235/