Niko has just finished school and lives with his two younger sisters, their mother and grandmother in Tbilisi. When he starts working in a wine cooperative he is confronted in an unpleasant manner with the world of adults: To fulfill the plan, wine of poor quality is bottled but Niko soon realizes he is the only one against this practice. He is also disillusioned by his first love – his colleague Marina is amused by his “naivety”. Iosseliani’s feature debut is not only a film about becoming an adult but a hymn to those who affirm themselves in a world of adaptation and pragmatism and do not allow themselves to be corrupted. —Arsenal
A major director of the Soviet sixties who continues to make internationally acclaimed films. A child musician and music student, Iosseliani switched to mathemetics at Moscow State University, then attended VGIK, studied directing under Dovzhenko, and graduated in 1961. His first major film, April, resulted in his being denied work for two years, during which worked as both a sailor and day laborer. He returned to direct films such as Falling Leaves, which takes a documentary approach to depicting Georgian life. His films took subtle, elliptical paths to critiquing the Soviet Union until he emigrated to France in the early 1980s, at which time his pictures -often still set in the Soviet territories- became marginally more explicit. But his movies are much too concerned with universality, the mysteries of human existense and the beauty of nature, to be overtly political. Though still residing in France, since the fall of the Soviet Union Iosseliani has worked more closely… read more
