Tengiz Abuladze studied theatrical direction at Rustaveli Theatre Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, and film- making at the VGIK Cinematography Institute, graduating in 1953, when he joined Georgia Film Studios as a director. He made documentaries before making his feature debut in 1958. He won his first award at Cannes in 1956, for the feature "Magdana's Donkey."

His best-known work is the trilogy Vedreba (1967), The Wishing Tree (1976) and Repentance (1984, released 1987), the latter being one of the first films to be released in the post-glasnost era, and one of the most controversial, thanks to its allegorical portrait of a small town under Stalinist terror (Stalin, like Abuladze, hailing originally from Georgia). It was a huge success in the Soviet Union, and achieved reasonable distribution abroad, almost unheard of for a Georgian film.

Mr. Abuladze was elected to the Soviet Parliament in 1989