When the communists decide to renovate the city and try to demolish a badly positioned church, the religious citizens decide to fight for what is holy to them. Set in Tbilisi, Khabarda is a satire that plays on the tension between petit bourgeois values and the incoming sweep of Communist ideology. The film was immediately criticized for elements that were insensitive to Georgian culture. However, Chiaureli's contributions to both radical film style and the expressive pictorial quality of socialist cinema, with films like Saba and Khabarda, remain impressive.