Georgian Documentary ‘9-Month Contract’ Follows a Surrogate Mother’s Harrowing Ordeal

For Georgia’s Ketevan Vashagashvili, whose debut feature documentary “9-Month Contract” recently won the Alternativa Film Festival’s Spotlight Award, making it has impacted her life profoundly. “I think we grew together and changed each other’s lives,” she says of Zhana, the main subject of her docu.

“For me, ‘9-Month Contract’ is a story of a mother’s sacrifice, driven by a central question: How far will a mother go out of unconditional love for her child,” she says.

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Vashagashvili first met Zhana and her four-year-old daughter, Elene, in 2012 while shooting a short TV documentary about life after orphanages in Georgia. Many of the young women she encountered were trapped in cycles of sex work and addiction. Zhana stood apart – homeless, raising her child on the streets and determined not to send her back into the system.

Her resilience and tenderness left a lasting impression. Vashagashvili filmed her story, helped secure safer housing, raised money for rent and supported her in finding work and social assistance.

“It took me a while to earn her trust, now Zhana and her daughter are very much part of my life,” she says.

The documentary follows Zhana as she seeks surrogacy to make ends meet and better support her daughter, encountering stigma, unsavory clients, shadowy agencies and other challenges along the way, especially to her health as she carries four pregnancies to term and loses the fifth.

The film also explores the intersection of motherhood, surrogacy, the commodification of women and homelessness within contemporary Georgian society – anchored in a universal search for dignity, security and what it means to be a mother.

“I spent 10 years of my life to tell the story of a woman working as a surrogate mother in Georgia. The film’s distinct perspective lies in exposing how conflicting laws and inequalities shape deeply personal decisions and impact the lives of women in the global south,” says Vashagashvili, who adds that surrogacy is legal but not regulated in Georgia.

Motherhood is a recurring focus in her work. Her previous short, “Online Mother,” explores immigrant mothers and long-distance family bonds through a partly personal lens. This ongoing interest naturally led her to surrogacy as a subject of research. Her next project will likely be connected with women’s issues once more.

In Zhana, she found a deeply resonant subject: a woman who grew up without a mother herself, yet is driven by fierce maternal instinct and a willingness to do anything for her daughter.

“My two interests converged in Zhana and I could not find a better person through which to explore the themes which were personally affecting me.”

 “9-Month Contract” is produced by Nino Chichua and Anna Khazaradze for 1991 Productions, Martichka Bozhilova for Agitprop and Sylvia Nagel for Vincent Productions.

It is slated for a theatrical release in Georgia in May. The 3^rd Alternativa Film Festival took place April 21-30 in Medellín, Colombia.