Otar Iosseliani, Director of ‘Falling Leaves,’ Dies at 89
Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani has died at the age of 89. His death was shared by his friend, photographer Yuri Rost, who wrote on Telegram, “We are grieving. Otar Iosseliani, the great film director, an amazing person and my very close friend, has gone.”
Iosseliani, who was born in the Soviet Union but lived most of his life in France, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1984. His first full-length film, “Falling Leaves” (also translated as “When Leaves Fall”), was released in 1966 and won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival.
He returned to the festival in 2010 with his film “Chantrapas,” which was set during his own childhood in the republic of Georgia. The title of the film is an expression in Russian that is rooted in French and was used to describe those who did not support the Soviet regime. Of the movie, Iosseliani told the New York Times, “The film is about happiness. And how to be true to oneself, resist corruption.”
The director was born in Tblisi, Georgia, in 1934. As a young adult he studied music at the Tblisi Conservatory until 1953, when he went to the University of Moscow to major in math. From there, he attended the VGIK film school.
Iosseliani left the Soviet Union for France in 1982. In addition to “Favourites of the Moon” and “Falling Leaves,” he was also known for the films “There Was a Singing Thrush” and “Pastoral.”
The journalist Mikhail Lemkhin once wrote that Iosseliani harbored a belief that the destruction of traditional ways of life was the destruction of culture itself. That theme was explored in his 1991 movie “Chasing Butterflies.” It was shot in Senegal, a choice Iosseliani said he made with a lot of intention.
In 2015 he directed “Chant d’hiver” (“Winter Song”), a movie about war. The film follows post-revolution France and what is believed to be the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. In an interview about the movie, he told Film Comment, “War is always useless, it doesn’t change anything. War between neighbors, between political parties, between states, war to conquer territories — it has no use whatsoever.”
Iosselani also said of making film about war, “We have found a way of amusing ourselves with all the bizarre, absurd things that have happened on this planet, and during the short time we are given to live on the planet, we never stop doing those stupid things, silly things.”
The director was thoughtful about the act of creating art itself, telling the outlet that, as a director, “You keep making the same film, but with time that film changes.”
“We are like the bridge made up of everything we’ve absorbed in the past,” he added. “We are the result of what has been done and absorbed all the way to us. We are here as a bridge to pass on the things that we have absorbed, with our point of view added to it.”
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