The cinema was never just about the movie. At its best, it was a kind of secular chapel—a place to sit among strangers and share, without speech or touching, the same flickering dreams. For most of the 20th century, this was how we practiced collective attention: in the dark, together. Then came the multiplexes, the megaplexes, and eventually the algorithms—each step a little brighter, a little lonelier.
So what do we make of FOMO Skyline Cinema, which opened, with minimal fanfare but maximal charm, on the rooftop of Bazari Orbeliani in the simmering heart of Tbilisi this July? An outdoor screening space launched by a couple of Australian transplants, the project might have seemed, at first glance, like another seasonal entertainment insert: Instagrammable, perishable, pleasant. But that would be to miss the strangeness of its ambition—and the subtle acuity of its context.
David and Danika arrived in Tbilisi from Sydney sometime in 2024, for reasons that were neither quite economic nor quite romantic, although both terms hover, hazily, around every expat tale. In December, they took over a curious little cinematic jewel-box: the original FOMO where FOod met MOvies and viewers entered through a bar, slipped behind a bookshelf, and settled into a private screening room that felt equal parts speakeasy and time capsule. Films were viewed through wireless headphones. The space held fewer people than a minibus. It was more séance than cinema.
Then, in July, the project moved. Or perhaps it unspooled. What had once been cloistered and hushed became open and expansive. The rooftop at Bazari Orbeliani—formerly the domain of pigeons and the occasional artisan flea market—now houses FOMO Skyline, a large screen under an even larger sky. Screenings begin at dusk. The sound is crisp. The city glows, inattentively, around the edges. It is, quite plainly, lovely.
But loveliness alone doesn’t explain the pull. Nor does the programming—although it is good, eclectic, and generous. What makes FOMO’s rooftop incarnation interesting, maybe even important, is the way it stakes a claim in the contested terrain of urban belonging. At a time when public space is either crumbling, privatized, or endlessly surveilled, FOMO reintroduces the radical idea that watching a film with other people in an unpredictable environment can still feel meaningful, even magical.
At a time when public space is either crumbling, privatized, or endlessly surveilled, FOMO reintroduces the radical idea that watching a film with other people in an unpredictable environment can still feel meaningful, even magical
It’s also a quiet study in the art of spatial intelligence. To watch a film outdoors in Tbilisi, a city as volatile in its climate as in its politics, is no small thing. Thunderstorms brew out of nowhere. The power grid is a matter of faith. Even the architecture seems to lean toward entropy. And yet—there you are, surrounded by friends and strangers, a glass of wine in hand, the wind lifting your collar as the credits roll across the Caucasian dusk.
The rooftop cinema is, of course, an old idea. In Rome and Paris, outdoor screenings are summer traditions. In Tehran, they are acts of flirtatious subversion. In Brooklyn, they are usually accompanied by sustainably sourced popcorn and long lines. But here in Tbilisi, FOMO Skyline doesn’t feel like a reproduction: it feels like a local invention, using borrowed parts.
There is something distinctly Georgian in the spatial improvisation—the way a roof becomes a stage, a market becomes a lounge, a couple from elsewhere becomes, for a while, part of the social fabric. This is a city that thrives on makeshift elegance. You see it in the cracked facades, the hand-painted signage, the ancient balconies strung with laundry and bougainvillea. FOMO fits right in, without pretending to belong.
Indeed, the question of belonging hovers around the project like smoke. What does it mean for two Australians to open a cinema in a city not their own? Is it gentrification with a sunset filter, or something gentler, more reciprocal? The answer, perhaps, lies in the project’s scale and temperament. FOMO doesn’t dominate; it invites. It doesn’t colonize; it adapts. There is no corporate sponsorship, no neon, no English-only signage. David and Danika are not here to franchise a lifestyle. They’re just throwing films at the sky and seeing who shows up. In a city that has lately seen far more authoritarian crackdowns than cultural expansions, such gestures feel, if not revolutionary, then at least quietly reparative.
And yes, the name matters. FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. In its ironic way, it gestures to a culture of chronic presence, a hunger for experience, for connection, for some fragment of enchantment in the boredom and repetition of post-digital life. But here, the fear dissolves into something softer. You’re already here. You’ve made it up the stairs. The screen is flickering. The city is yours, if only for the length of a film.
Which, of course, is the whole point. Cinema has always trafficked in illusion. But the best illusions tell us something real. In this case, that culture doesn’t always have to scale, monetize, or centralize to matter. Sometimes it happens on rooftops. Sometimes it begins with a bookshelf. Sometimes it is exactly the size of the people who show up, and no bigger.
And sometimes—though rarely, and only at dusk—the screen and the sky seem to blend. For a moment, you can’t tell which is showing you the story. But you watch anyway. That, too, is cinema.
By Ivan Nechaev
