Late Marriage

Born in Soviet Georgia in 1966, Dover Koshashvili immigrated to Israel with his family in 1972. He has directed two feature films and a short. His short, Im Hukim (By the Laws), first earned him acclaim at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, where it was considered for the Cinefoundation award.

In 2001, Koshashvili made his feature film directorial debut with Late Marriage, from a screenplay he wrote himself. The film was critically acclaimed in both the U.S. and abroad. Stephen Holden of The New York Times called the movie “…a powerful and very bitter comedy.” Danny Graydon of the BBC wrote that the film has “a lively script, an array of touching characters and situations that are fully exploited of their dramatic and comedic potential, this is an honest portrait of family tensions that Hollywood rarely approaches.” Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote “Writer-director Dover Kosashvili is a shrewd observer of cultural collision, and his film — a stunning directing debut — is anything but sentimental.” Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film “one of the cleverest, most deceptively amusing comedies of the year,” and Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly cited it as one of the Top 10 Films of the Year.

Late Marriage was selected to be screened at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section and went on to win the following awards from the Israeli Film Academy: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Editing, Best Music, Best Sound, and was nominated for Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The film additionally went on to win the Fipresci and Best Actress prize at the Buenos Aires International Film Festival where it was also nominated for Best Film, the Wolgin award at the Jerusalem Film Festival and a number of other prestigious prizes and awards from all over the world. in 2003, he released his second feature film: Gift from Above. The film went on to garner 11 nominations from the Israeli Film Academy, including Best Film and Best Director. –theduelfilm.com/