Hotel Metalurg

When conflict broke out in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia in 1992, about 200 000 people had to flee. Thousands of these Internally Displaced People (IDPs) found new homes in abandoned sanatoriums in Tskaltubo, a tourist resort known for its Soviet-era luxury sanatoriums. Thirty years later, the “Metalurg” hotel has been emptied of its men over the years but it is still occupied by a community of women and their children. They are surviving among the ruins of the Soviet past and living with the hope of one day returning to Abkhazia. As the years pass and Russia continues its policy of occupying Abkhazia, the hope of returning home seems far away. Khatuna, Dali, Tamar, Lika, Liana and the others became “refugees” in their own country.