Since Otar Left

France / Russian Federation 2003, 100 minutes
Dir. Julie Bertuccelli
In Georgian, French with English subtitles
Rating: [M]
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Drama

Topics: Late-life.

Feat. Dinara Droukarova, Nino Khomassouridze, Ester Gorintin

Aroview: Touching and wryly comic tale set in post-Communist Georgia, in which a mother, daughter and granddaughter partly survive through a romantic attachment to all things French, while negotiating a decaying, slightly feral present reality.

When the news comes through that a beloved relative has died, a conspiracy develops to keep the news from his tough elderly mother, played by Gorintin in a star-making performance at the age of 89. Delicately directed with an eye for the flow of day-to-day life and intergrating realistic surprises and twists of human behaviour, this is finally a fond, memorable tribute to enduring family bonds.

NZ International Film Festival 2003