Gardens in Autumn is about the social decline of the politician Vincent, but it is not a case study of precarity but an ode to life. Forced to give up a ministerial post and the associated perks, Vincent finds himself once again in the small flat in which he grew up as a child. He discovers the pleasure of drinking, of music, of the beauty of public parks where time can easily be whiled away. He thus discovers the joys of life – late, but not too late. —Arsenal

Director

Otar Iosseliani

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