Since Otar Left (2003) Depuis qu'Otar est parti... (original title)

Director:

Julie Bertuccelli

Writers:

Julie Bertuccelli (written by) &
Bernard Renucci (written by) ...
(more)

Release Date:

17 September 2003 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

For a mother, a sister and a niece, nothing is the same . . . Since Otar Left [UK Quad Poster]

Plot:

The one joy in the lives of a mother and daughter comes from the regular letters sent to them from Paris from the family's adored son...

Plot Keywords:

Letter | Businessmen | Tbilisi | Title Directed By Female | Airport

Awards:

12 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Esther Gorintin	...	Eka
Nino Khomasuridze	...	Marina
Dinara Drukarova	...	Ada
Temur Kalandadze	...	Tengiz (as Temour Kalandadze)
Rusudan Bolqvadze	...	Rusiko (as Roussoudan Bolkvadze)
Sasha Sarishvili	...	Alexi (as Sacha Sarichvili)
Duta Skhirtladze	...	Niko (as Douta Skhirtladze)
Abdellah Moundy	...	Le berbère (as Abdallah Moundy)
Mzia Eristavi	...	Dora
Misha Eristavi	...	Fils Dora
Zoura Natrochvili	...	Voisin (Mika)
Alexandre Makhorablichvili	...	Fonctionnaire
Micha Moudjiri	...	Directeur usine
Jacques Fleury	...	Homme d'affaire 1
Frédéric Payen	...	Homme d'affaire 2
Manon Abacjodze	...	Postière 1
Manana Taralachvili	...	Postière 2
Irina Toukhoulova	...	Professuer fac
Médéa Roinichvili	...	Voisine
Iago Demetrachvili	...	Père Alexi
Gotcha Darbaidze	...	Otar en photo
Vaja Jalagania	...	Photographe
Malamine Sissokho	...	Chauffeur taxi
Sarah Chaumette	...	Hôtesse de l'air

Directed by
Julie Bertuccelli

Writing credits
Julie Bertuccelli		(written by) &
Bernard Renucci		(written by)
Roger Bohbot		(adaptation)
Alda Engoian		(translation) and
Gotcha Djavakhichvili		(translation) and
Miguel Machalski		(translation)

Produced by
Sébastien Delloye	....	co-producer: Entre Chien et loup
Diana Elbaum	....	co-producer: Entre Chien et loup
Yael Fogiel	....	producer
Laetitia Gonzalez	....	associate producer
Jana Sardlishvili	....	executive producer: Studio 99 (as Jana Sardlichvili)

Cinematography by
Christophe Pollock

Film Editing by
Emmanuelle Castro

Casting by
Stéphane Batut

Production Design by
Emmanuel de Chauvigny

Costume Design by
Nathalie Raoul

Makeup Department
Msia Kentshiashvili	....	hair stylist (as Mzia Kentchiachvili)
Msia Kentshiashvili	....	makeup artist (as Mzia Kentchiachvili)
Françoise Ben Soussan	....	hair stylist: Paris
Françoise Ben Soussan	....	makeup artist: Paris

Production Management
Sylvie Caillabet	....	post-production manager
Mat Troi Day	....	production manager
Adam Marchand	....	assistant unit manager
Jean-Philippe Moreteau	....	assistant unit manager
Regis Saillard	....	unit manager (as Régis Saillard)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Elsa Amiel	....	second assistant director: Paris
Marine Kulumbegashvili	....	first assistant director (as Marina Kouloumbegachvili)
Gabriele Roux	....	assistant director

Art Department
Bruno Albanti	....	assistant set decorator: Paris
Besarion Gelashvili	....	assistant art director (as Bessarion Guelachvili)
Gia Laperadze	....	assistant art director (as Guia Laperadze)
Virginie Noël	....	set decorator: Paris
Mamuka Tkeshelashvili	....	set designer (as Mamouka Tkechelachvili)

Sound Department
Thomas Gauder	....	sound mixer
Aline Gavroy	....	foley recording mixer
Olivier Goinard	....	sound editor
Olivier Goinard	....	supervising sound editor
Alex Hudd	....	sound consultant: dolby
Xavier Marsais	....	foley artist & post-synchronization recording
Henri Morelle	....	sound
Stéphane Morelle	....	sound assistant
Arnaud Rolland	....	assistant sound editor
Arnaud Rolland	....	sound editor
Philippe van Leer	....	foley artist (as Philippe Van Leer)

Camera and Electrical Department
Arnand Cousin	....	electrician: Paris
Lucilio Da Costa Pais	....	electrician
Eric Lesage	....	electrician
Cyril Liberman	....	camera operator (as Cyrille Liberman)
Olivier Regent	....	chief electrician (as Olivier Régent)

Casting Department
Marion Touitou	....	casting: children
Isabelle Ungaro	....	extras casting

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Dolores Gonzalez	....	wardrobe (as Dolorès Gonzalez)
Keti Palavandishvili	....	wardrobe (as Ketty Palavandichvili)
Filippa Russo	....	chief costumer

Editorial Department
Serge Anthony	....	grader
Julie Delord	....	assistant editor
Thomas Glaser	....	assistant editor
Bruno Patin	....	color timer

Music Department
Dato Evgenidze	....	composer: song "Poissons"
Vladimir Spivakov	....	musician: piano for Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel"

Other crew
Samantha Mialet	....	production assistant
Maria Moutot-Tolomio	....	location manager
Sandrine Pillon	....	production assistant
Els Rastelli	....	script supervisor
Rémi Roy	....	administrator
Martine Vidalenc	....	production assistant

Thanks
Jean-Louis Bertuccelli	....	thanks
Emmanuel Finkiel	....	thanks
Otar Iosseliani	....	thanks

Production Companies

• Les Films du Poisson (presents)
• arte France Cinéma (in co-production with)
• Entre Chien et Loup (in co-production with)
• Studio 99 (in co-production with)
• Canal+ (with the participation of)
• Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) (with the support of)
• Eurimages (with the support of)
• Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Communauté Française de Belgique (with the support of)
• Télédistributeurs Wallons (with the support of)
• Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) (with the collaboration of)
• Procirep (with the support of)
• Ateliers du Cinéma Européen (ACE) (developed in association with)
• Programme MEDIA de la Communauté Européenne (with the support of)

Distributors

• Alfa Films (2004) (Argentina) (theatrical)
• CinemArt (2005) (Czech Republic) (theatrical)
• Cinemien (2004) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Mongrel Media (2004) (Canada) (theatrical)
• Toshiba Entertainment (2004) (Japan) (theatrical)
• Zeitgeist Films (2004) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• esse&bi cinematografica distribuzione (2003) (Italy) (theatrical)
• Argentina Video Home (2005) (Argentina) (DVD)
• Argentina Video Home (2005) (Argentina) (VHS)
• Haut et Court
• Mongrel Media (2004) (Canada) (DVD)
• Movienet (Germany)
• United King Films (Israel)
• Zeitgeist Video (2005) (USA) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel et des Télédistributeurs Wallons  support (as Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel)
• Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel et des Télédistributeurs Wallons  supported by (as Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel)
• Ministère de la Communauté Française de Belgique  support (as Communauté Française de Belgique)
• Ministère de la Communauté Française de Belgique  supported by (as Communauté Française de Belgique)

Also Known As:

"Depuis qu'Otar est parti..." - France (original title)

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

France | Belgium | Georgia

Language:

Georgian | French | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | Dolby SR

Certification:

Australia:M | Germany:o.Al. | Italy:T | Netherlands:AL | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | UK:15 | USA:Unrated | Argentina:Atp | Brazil:14 | Czech Republic:12

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Company:

Les Films du Poisson

Some kind of masterpiece: viewers of all ages and genders will be swept off their feet

Three women -- a grandmother, a middle-aged daughter, and a university-student granddaughter, live together, male-less, in Tblisi amid post-Soviet economic collapse. An occasional hard-currency bill shows up in letters from a beloved son/brother/uncle, who has qualified as a physician but is working as a clandestine laborer in Paris. The women snap at each other, manipulate one another, and confront life as best they can, each from her own perspective and unique experience. There is a large apartment filled with treasured bibelots and French books, and the suggestion of a more respectable, Tchekovianly Francophile pre-revolutionary past.

An image, among many arresting ones in the film: during a thunderstorm the power has gone out, as it frequently does in crumbling Georgia along with the water and the gas, and the apartment is lighted by candles, allowing the granddaughter to study and to be bathed in a kind of De La Tour luminescence. Then the storm ends, the power comes on, and the magic effect yields to harsh electric whiteness. The three generations peel off electronically: mother tunes in local radio to Georgian pop, grandmother turns on the black-and-white TV to watch a comfortingly boring Soviet-style newscast on a new dam (for her, order has gone and all is lost), granddaughter pops a rock cassette into her player and continues to study in a room suddenly flooded with a light in which everything seems more banal, including herself. Great stuff.

The dramatic anchor of the film is an extraordinary performance from the ninety-year-old Esther Gorontin. This is anything but a sweet old lady: she is misanthropic, querulous, petulant and willful, and when she and her daughter are not spitting and spatting, she immures herself in self-satisfied nostalgia, muttering in Russian (never Georgian) that things were better under Stalin. The beloved son is yearned for, spoken of and asked about compulsively, something that is ostensibly treated by her daughter as a tolerable quirk of age, to be humored -- but you can tell it hurts. Stalin and Soviet order are long gone, and son Otar's absence (which is far greater than she is supposed to realize) has left the other huge void in her life. The family's Francophilia allows Otar's experiences in Paris (which are shown to have in reality been quite miserable) to be lived via a romanticized vicariousness that is fed by each letter, always in stiff, old-fashioned French.

Language is an issue, both for Georgia and for the cast, since only the striking, Jeanne-Moreauesque Nino Khomasuridze, who plays the mother, is a native Georgian and speaks the language. Gorontin is Polish, but speaks French and Russian, as does the granddaughter Dinara Drukarova, who is faultless as a bright young woman who keeps much inside and, as the absent Otar puts it in a letter, "rounds out the angles" in the family until, as young people do, she suddenly explodes at her mother with all her long-repressed, Hamletian resentment and spite (and, as young people do, does this at the worst possible emotional moment). Drukarova learned some Georgian for the occasion, but Gorontin understandably refused to do so. Writing and managing the script must have been nightmarish, but the way in which the characters switch from Russian to Georgian and back depending on context and interlocutor seems entirely realistic for post-Soviet Georgia, and the use of French as a language of refuge and a bastion of dignity is in this context completely plausible.

The film will no doubt hold special resonance for woman viewers -- the depiction of a universe from which men are kept at a distance, and of the bitter joys of aging and of inter-generational love and tension is all done with heartbreaking accuracy. But Julie Bertucelli's first film is, with a lot of help from the tremendous Gorontin, some kind of masterpiece and should sweep viewers of all genders and generations off their feet.