Tengiz Evgenis dze Abuladze[a] (31 January 1924 – 6 March 1994) was a Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre teacher and People's Artist of the USSR.

He is most famous for his film trilogy: The Plea (The Supplication) (1968), The Wishing Tree (1977), and Repentance (1984, released 1987), which won him the Lenin Prize (1988) and the first Nika Award for Best Picture.

Repentance revolves around the death of an old tyrant, Varlam Aravidze, and the refusal of a woman, Ketevan Barateli, to leave his corpse in peace.

Returning to Tbilisi with his fellow Georgian Revaz Chkheidze, Abuladze joined the Gruziafilm studios and together they began their career making documentary films about their country's folklore.

Abuladze's reputation is, however, based on a trilogy of films that deal with fundamental questions of good and evil, love and hate, life and death.

When Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost arrived and the old guard in the Soviet filmmakers' union was unanimously ejected in 1986, a Conflict Commission was established to review these shelved films.

With encouragement from the then-Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, Repentance was released, first in Georgia and then across the Soviet Union, where it attracted record audiences and became the flagship film of the whole glasnost process.