12/04/2005

It is the director from Georgia, Otar Iosseliani, who was chosen this morning for the tribute organised within the 44th Semaine Internationale de la Critique (SIC) which will take place from the 12th to the 20th of May during the Cannes Film Festival. After such great directors as Ken Loach, Bernardo Bertolucci, Barbet Schroeder, Marin Karmitz, and Jacques Rozier, Otar Iosseliani will be dedicated a special screening for his film Falling Leaves which was the first USSR movie ever chosen by the SIC, in 1968, but at the time the film was screened and even won the Fipresci Prize in the absence of its author, since Iosseliani was deemed too subversive to be allowed to leave the USSR.

Otar Iosseliani was born in 1934 in Tbilissi ; he studied cinema at the famous VGIK school in Moscow (as did, for instance, Tarkovski and Paradjanov) and made nine features, three documentaries, and two TV-fictions. His original style earned him three Jury’s Prize at the Mostra in Venice (with Favourites of the Moon in 1984, Et la lumière fut in 1989, and Brigands, chapitre VII in 1996), the Louis Delluc Prize (in 1999, for Adieu, plancher des vaches!), and a Silver Bear as Best director at the 2002 Berliinale for his latest film, Lundi matin.

(Translated from French)