A Zeitgeist Films Release
Publicity:
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A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
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“BEAUTIFUL...TOUCHING...SUPERBLY ACTED...
a trio of sublime performances...suffused with indelible humanist
values and emotions...few will be unmoved by this universally
applicable tale of love and loss.”
—David Stratton, VARIETY
SINCE OTAR LEFT...
A F I L M B Y J U L I E B E R T U C C E L L I
Winner of the prestigious Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and
featuring a trio of stunning performances, Julie Bertuccelli’s exquisite SINCE OTAR
LEFT… is a bittersweet tale of deception and affection.
Three Georgian women—strong-willed matriarch Eka (90-year-old former dental
assistant and fledgling star Esther Gorintin), her long-suffering daughter Marina
(Nino Khomassouridze) and rebellious granddaughter Ada (FREEZE, DIE, COME TO
LIFE’s Dinara Droukarova)—all live together in their stately-yet-crumbling apartment
in contemporary Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic. Eka pines for her
beloved son Otar, a physician who is now a construction worker in Paris. Marina is
deeply resentful of her mother’s obsession with her absent brother, while Ada
endures their bickering and yearns for a more adventurous existence. When a friend
of Otar’s calls with tragic news, Marina and Ada must make a seemingly impossible
choice: Do they keep Eka from learning the truth?
Former assistant director to Bertrand Tavernier and Krzysztof Kieslowski,
Bertuccelli deftly spins the delicate threads of familial conflict and maternal love
into a bewitching tangle of intergenerational duplicity.
“A sweet, accomplished fable of loss and self-deception in the
post-Soviet world... an effective mother-daughter-granddaughter
drama featuring the amazing Esther Gorintin.”
—J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE
France, 2003, 102 mins, Color, 35mm, 1.85:1, Dolby SRD
In French, Russian and Georgian with English subtitles
A Zeitgeist Films Release
INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR JULIE BERTUCCELLI
Your background is in documentary filmmaking. Is the manner in which you seize on
a gesture or a look to communicate characters’ feelings and their common outlook
something which you get from your experience with documentaries?
Maybe. What I love about documentaries is that the people one films invent their own
scenes without one’s having to ask them to do so. One chooses one’s characters,
determines the shooting-conditions, the right manner and the right sense of distance,
then one simply watches and follows them, presents them as best one can and trusts
in one’s own eyes. I suppose I wanted to go on working with this freedom, only
applying to a dramatic situation. Having said which, in my documentary work, I never
intrude on people’s private lives. I merely film people—often at work—and if the job is
well done, then a sense of intimacy appears in their faces, in their attitudes and their
way of speaking and in the silences between words. My interest in fiction sprang out of
a need to go push my limits and find a different way of filming characters.
The main difference between drama and documentary is that in drama there are
actors…
True, but at the start my intentions were not so very different. I shot my actors with
the same curiosity that I shoot people in my documentaries, except that I was less
afraid that I might be manipulating them, that I might be transgressing the taboo on
intimacy. Indeed, with Since Otar Left, when I sensed that an actor was acting as such,
all the emotion was gone. I enjoyed shooting written dialogue, but I have to say I was
very suspicious. I was afraid it would sound fake.
How did this, your first feature, come about?
Since Otar Left is based on a true story that I was told. It was true but it seemed so
unlikely that it made me want to appropriate it. And in any case, it was a story that
could not be told as a documentary—it was much too intimate. That’s why I had to
embark on a new kind of storytelling…. And of course we changed everything,
reinventing the story, the end, the characters…
How was the project developed?
I told executive producerYaël Fogiel about my idea and we found some money for the
script to be written. Bernard Renucci, a screenwriter I have often worked with in my
documentaries, wrote the first three or four drafts in close collaboration with the
producer and with myself. Then when we obtained the French government’s grant aid, I
rewrote the script alone, then with Roger Bohbot to bring the story closer to me,
adapting and restructuring it.
Why the Republic of Georgia?
I spent six months in Georgia working on a film by Otar Iosseliani and I fell in love with
the place, as I had earlier fallen in love with Iosseliani’s films. It’s a very attractive
country, a crossroad between Europe and Asia, with Caucasian and Russian and
European and Middle Eastern influences. You sense all that when you go to Tbilisi, it is
a magnificent town, despite its dilapidated condition. Things are less harsh there than
in Russia. People are warmer. I felt very at home. Perhaps because I come from the
Mediterranean.
Georgian history is fairly chaotic, they’ve had all sorts of problems, but they tend to
preserve the best of what they’ve got. I fell in love with Georgia as a place but I did not
particularly decide that I would make a film there. Then when this story came up, I
knew it would have to be made there. Primarily because the plot would give us a
pretext to show this fascinating place. And also because I wanted to say something
about France —not France seen from the inside, France seen from elsewhere. I wanted
to deal in foreign imaginations, to show the discrepancies that occur. I wanted to make
a film a long way from home and use the distance to say something about myself, in
other people’s eyes.
Why is it that Ada’s family is so in love with France?
Georgia is a land which has a long tradition of links with France, though they are not
well known. Many French people have travelled there and many indeed have settled
there. There has been a constant process of exchange. Georgians are fascinated by
French culture. Many people within the Russian sphere of influence are. All the same, I
don’t feel that this is a film about Francophilia. I am not interested in talking about
France so much as in talking about how one comes to fall in love with a foreign land
one knows only from one’s imagination, with all the potential for disillusionment that
that contains.
Still, the heart of the film is in its portrayal of three generations of women…
Yes, the idea was to show a triple relationship between three women caught in a
changing world, sometimes changing for the better, sometimes for the worse. I wanted
Eka, Marina and Ada to be equally important, I did not want one part to eclipse the
others. You could say that they are all three aspects of one and the same character,
the same woman at three different stages in life. And then of course this family is a
manless family. Men are rejected, put aside. In Georgia, when men are unable to
provide, women take on that responsibility. Otar is not the only man to have gone
away. Ada’s father is also mentioned as having died in Afghanistan. Perhaps he was
Russian; one does not know. As I come from a fairly matriarchal world, I was able to
project a great deal of myself into this and introduce a mother-daughter theme. The
strength of the mother-daughter relationship is what has made me, in a good sense
and in perhaps in a destructive sense too.
The story opens with a silent scene about a cake. Not a word is said and yet one
immediately understands the connections between these women…
The opening scene was not in the screenplay, it was totally improvised. There was just
a need to see the three of them together in silence, one Sunday. They go out for a bit,
they are bored, they have nothing to do and nothing to say to each other. It was our
last day of shooting in Georgia. I hardly had to direct the scene, the actors knew their
parts well.
How did you cast the film?
There is a major theatrical tradition in Georgia. My first notion was to find three
Georgian women. In the end the only Georgian actor was Nino Khomassouridze who
plays Marina. Nino is an impressive woman—she is very sensuous, very beautiful. And
the incredible thing is that I eventually discovered that she herself had lived through
something similar to what is in the film, something tragic.
The casting director, Stephane Batut, searched both France and Georgia to find the
right Ada. It was not long before we were out looking for non-professional actors. We
saw dozens of Georgian girls who spoke French, but we did not find that perfect
person we wanted. We spread our net wider and went to Russia, as Russian is widely
spoken in Georgia, and I was soon introduced to Dinara Droukarova who lives in Paris
now. People may remember her from Kanevsky’s Freeze, Die, Come to Life which is
one of my favorite films. And because it is one of my favorite films I was very moved to
meet Dinara. She is Russian but of Mongolian extraction. Originally in the screenplay,
Ada found her womanhood a problem. She was really a 25-year-old teenager, harsh
and overweight and uncomfortable with herself. Dinara is so attractive that I had to
adapt the story to fit her slim body. In the end, her discontent is communicated by the
fact that she looks different, she looks stubborn and over-intense.
What about Eka, the grandmother?
I loved Esther Gorintin in Voyages, Emmanuel Finkiel’s magnificent film. But I was
worried that people would make a connection if I cast her. And also, I would have
preferred to have found a Georgian Francophile to play the part, who would not have
appeared in any other film. In the end, however, after searching high and low and
meeting some incredible people, Esther obviously seemed right. She is a remarkable
actress. She is also 90 years old. It was not easy for her to go to Georgia for two
months and shoot a film. But she was amazing. Her concentration was remarkable, she
was professional, she was tireless. She loved the place and enjoyed the food so much
she put on twelve pounds.
Did you rehearse?
We did a few readings, but not too many. There were language problems: French,
Russian, Georgian. Esther spoke Russian and French but Dinara needed to learn
Georgian and Marina was not too keen on speaking Russian, because to her it’s the
language of oppression. The main advantage of rehearsing was to establish who would
speak what language and at what time. And for me it was useful to be able to observe
my actresses. I did not want to have to psychologize things, nor give overprecise
directions. I needed to watch them, to find details in their behaviour that suited the
characters and vice-versa. Some people have a particular way of tidying a desk or
cleaning a room before they sit down to work. My need was to see real people and
places, to smell locations, details, the whole concrete business of pre-production.
Is your film a film about lying?
Yes and no. Of course, there is lying at every level and those lies generate more lying.
As a concept, lying is fascinating. It’s a great place to set a film because it is a twin
force, both destructive and creative. But in this story, lying is really a catalyst that
shows family precedent, that reveals how each of the women lives a lie and especially
how each of them changes their lives to fit this lie. I am a great liar myself—at least, I
enjoy the wealth of possibilities, the ambivalence involved in playing games with
reality—so I was not about to cast moral aspersions on lying: I wanted to show it as a
fact. Lying is not a question of principle; it springs from an excess of heart and is not
something I wanted to treat judgementally. It is no more than a slightly neurotic,
slightly mad way of inventing a life for oneself, of making one’s life more bearable and
also perhaps a way of manipulating people and allowing oneself to be manipulated by
them. In Since Otar Left, everyone has something to gain from the central lie.
Your interest in reality did not prevent you writing a dramatic story.
That was one of the problems in writing and also in editing. As time passed and as the
women’s lie was accepted, there was a danger that we might fall into a conventional
story with surprises and suspense. We didn’t want to have 40 billion double-entendre
scenes which would have turned the whole thing into a comedy. We want the story to
get off on the wrong foot as it were, never to be where one would expect it to be, to
hobble along but always get by. And in the cutting room, with Emmanuelle Castro, the
editor, we muddled things up even more.
Nevertheless, one is gripped by this story about lying and the consequences of
lying, one does want to know how it is all going to end.
We knew we had to stick as close to these women as possible and to the main strand,
which was “What are they going to do with this lie now that it has landed in their
lives?” The mother, for instance, carries the whole thing like a burden—a duty really—
then gradually it brings her a kind of calm. There is a new tenderness between her and
her mother, their relationship is more relaxed. And with Ada, our main concern was to
see how she might blossom and become herself because of this lie, how she might
enjoy it and start to live vicariously, how she might learn to be selfish. Ada really
makes the lie credible, she is the one who writes and can transform things. And in the
end when she leaves, it is not because of anything which she herself has done. That is
one of the things which touches me most, seeing how people create life under
constraint, more often than not out of nothing much more than a few bits of broken
this-and-that.
Is this true of the grandmother?
Yes. And in the end the grandmother is the most energetic of all three characters
precisely because she has the power to make life. Her attitude is that at any moment,
everything can be called into question, you can change direction, you don’t need a
fixed plan. The beautiful thing is how each one of the characters’ lives is transfigured. I
hate locking people up in fixed frames. I’ve made films about gravediggers, about a
man leaving prison, about a government law school, about a department store, about
corporate bosses in a merger. And in every case I’ve encountered people who prove
prejudice wrong.
In your film, you do show that the mother’s generation is a lost generation.
Marina’s generation is probably the generation to have coped with the end of the
Soviet Union least well. Marina has been hit hard by change. She is a product of the
past, yet she belongs fully to the present with its violence. She is cut in two by this
gap in history. She is condemned to know that her daughter must dream of leaving,
she is condemned to finding herself abandoned.
The photograph of Marina with a gun to her head tells us a lot about her past, her
quiet strength.
It’s a genuine photograph of Nino Khomassouridze. I went to the actors’ homes to find
photographs of themselves and I was fascinated to find this. Nino is someone very
complex and the picture is symbolic. It says that this woman has always been apart
and it also says this woman is so strong that she can deal with that, just as Marina was
trained as an engineer and finds herself selling junk in a flea market. Marina cannot
breakdown. That’s strong characters’ weak point.
And Eka, who is sometimes like a little girl, she is complex too.
Eka comes from an educated family, but when it suits her she says she loves Stalin.
She remains very keen on her appearance and as soon as she’s alone, she grabs an
opportunity for a cigarette. Characters don’t alter as they grow older, they only
accumulate more material, becoming more interesting as they acquire overlapping
contradictions. I met many people like that in Georgia, people who loved reading in
French and French literature, and though they didn’t exactly miss Stalin, they did say
things were better before. Those are contradictions I find interesting. I didn’t want
simplistic characters.
What gives life to the film is its shifting between two themes: the need to transmit,
and the need to repeat…
Transmission is indeed one of the themes in the screenplay. Obviously, when one is
dealing with a family, the idea of things being handed down from one generation to the
next occurs, as does the idea that errors and defects are passed on, sometimes along
with a need to make one’s own way in life. The idea that we are all constrained by the
example of others is a very cinematographic idea. When one is filming, the
unconscious speaks. Mysterious and intangible things, secrets even, come to the
surface and seem evident once they are revealed.
I believe that the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter is a way of
getting round a difficult relationship with one’s parents, a way of finding another path
to avoid getting locked up in an endless war between mother and daughter. People
both want and don’t want their children to leave home. The end-credit song says, in
Georgian, “Butterfly fly away, Butterfly do not fly away…”
What role does Otar’s example play in all this?
It’s such a remote example that it is difficult for any of them to pursue it. They don’t
really. I suppose that in the end the grandmother follows his example most faithfully
because she has the least to lose and because despite appearances she is extremely
generous. Perhaps she has known what has happened or guessed it for a long time,
and she only wants to encourage her granddaughter to leave for the far-off place she
dreams of. Maybe she wants to help her granddaughter accomplish what she herself
has never been able to do.
There is a strong physical quality to the relationship between these women. They
embrace, they rub each other’s feet, they wash each other’s hair...
This is the way I see family relationships, and in terms of form, it translates into a
taste for filming people’s physique which is expressive but not explanatory. A foot
being rubbed tells one a great deal about the character involved, about that person’s
relationship to other people. The women in my film give each other love and
tenderness, though not enough perhaps and perhaps not of the right kind. Because it
is also true that Marina is still asking her mother to love her. She cannot really grow up
and be a proper mother herself. So Ada plays the mother’s role. That’s one of the
things she finds stifling.
These three women share an apartment, but once again it is not the lack of
breathing space which you show us, but the life going on irrepressibly.
In the original screenplay, the story was set in a project-type apartment, in a modern
neighborhood that was already falling to pieces. Such places exist—they’re impressive
because so they’re so totally anarchic. There are doors out on to a balcony with no
balcony there, such as one sees in the apartment of Tenguiz, Marina’s boyfriend. But if
we’d set the film in such a place, then it would have turned into social realism and I
didn’t want all that social comment to outweigh the rest. And my heart led me to an
old-fashioned apartment, despite the fact that I was a little afraid of making things
seem too beautiful. The apartment we used as a location is a lovely one, but it is not
really a wealthy person’s apartment. It’s only “wealthy” because the people who live
there invest it with so much.
There’s also the whole courtyard life and the little garden where the grandmother
goes out to work.
Courtyards in Georgia are amazing. There’s a real sense of community in the way people
use the courtyards, with the kitchens set out on the balconies, above. Families remain
close-knit; grandparents, parents and children all living together. Today, you find 25
year-olds still living with their grandmothers. To us it seems magical, living with one’s
grandmother like that, and it makes for living arrangements which we no longer have
in our countries. But of course it creates neuroses too. Georgians have no choice and
living with one’s family increases the burden of social disapproval. This is what stifles
Ada and encourages her to want to leave. She needs to discover a new and different
world. In Georgia, whole generations have been locked in with their families, so there is
a real appetite for life, an appetite for novelty. People emigrate for lack of work but for
other reasons as well: for love, to fulfil a dream, to meet new people, out of curiosity,
to get away from family neuroses. There are a whole host of reasons and I wanted to
get away from social realist caricature in which themes of emigration often induce.
The second scene in the film is a long scene in the post office. Was that a way of
introducing letters as an important element in the film early on?
I am very attached to this scene. It’s the first scene I thought of and the first scene I
shot. The images are documentary images and I am very fond of them. They represent
my way of showing letters, as well as also the absolute dilapidation of an unusual
country, which remains cheerful, where people go on living and having fun despite all
the problems. As a documentary filmmaker, I always like showing people making the
most of what they’ve got to make a life for themselves.
The cinematography helps generate a sense that life always wins out.
There is something fascinating about having to deal with blackness, with night, with
candlelight. The locations were very beautiful and Christophe Pollock, the DP, came
out to Georgia early to make the most of them. We wanted the locations to come to
life almost physically. We absorbed as much of the atmosphere of the country as we
could, the gentleness and the complication of it. I am very attached to the locations
that are shown. I found places I liked, but they were not to be seen as picturesque, as a
catalogue of beauty spots. I wanted the story to have universal resonance, a story
that happened to be located in Georgia but which might just as easily have taken place
elsewhere.
And the wishing tree? Does that exist in real life?
Yes, it does. It did not appear in the early drafts of the screenplay and we came across
it with the screenwriter on our very first reconnaissance. There are trees all over the
place, often near churches. It’s an old pagan custom which I find moving. It makes
reality breathe. Even if you don’t believe in what is behind wishing trees, the gesture
itself—tying a ribbon to the branch of a tree—is a tradition. It is very moving. There is a
lot to those ribbons. They tell us something universal, they tell us that people’s desires
and sorrows and hopes are common to all mankind.
CAST
ESTHER GORINTIN (Eka)
Born in Poland, Esther Gorintin now lives in Paris. She began her acting career at
the age of 85, playing Vera in Emmanuel Finkiel’s Voyages. This won her the Best
Actress Prize at the Albi Film Festival, among others. She has since performed in a
number of shorts and four other feature films.
Filmography:
2003 SINCE OTAR LEFT... by Julie Bertuccelli
2002 CARNAGE by Delphine Gleize
2001 WIMBLEDON STAGE by Mathieu Amalric
2001 IMAGO by Marie Vermillard
1999 VOYAGES by Emmanuel Finkiel
DINARA DROUKAROVA (Ada)
Dinara Droukarova was born in St. Petersburg and has lived in Paris for several
years. Discovered at the age of 14 in Vitali Kanevsky’s Freeze, Die, Come to Life, she
has since acted in a number of films, including the recent Small Cuts.
Filmography:
2003 SINCE OTAR LEFT... by Julie Bertuccelli
2002 SMALL CUTS by Pascal Bonitzer
2000 ENGRENAGE (Caught in the System) by Frank Nicotra
1999 LE DERNIER DES IMMOBILES (Last to Move) by Nicola Sornaga
1989 IT HAPPENED NEAR THE SEA by Ayan Shakhmalyeva
1998 OF FREAKS AND MEN by Alexei Balabanov
1996 UN AMOUR INACHEVE (Unfinished Love) by Fabrice Cazeneuve
1995 LA TOILE (The Canvas), short by Siegfried
1995 THE SON OF GASCOGNE by Pascal Aubier
1994 WE THE CHILDREN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Vitali Kanevsky
1993 DONIASHA by Aeroptian
1993 ANGELS IN PARADISE by Yevgenvy Lungin
Best Actress Prize, Honfleur Russian Film Festival 1999
1992 SMOG by Ayan Shakmalyeva
1992 AN INDEPENDENT LIFE by Vitali Kanevsky
1990 FREEZE, DIE, COME TO LIFE by Vitali Kanevsky
NINO KHOMASSOURIDZE (Marina)
Nino Khomassouidze was born in Georgia and currently lives in Tbilisi. She has
acted in films since the age of 15 and has appeared in several Georgian and Russian
productions. She was trained at the Theatre Institute in Tbilisi before joining the
famous Mardjanishvili Company with whom she has performed in some 40
productions over the last 20 years. As well as acting in films and for the theatre,
she has also appeared in several television dramas.
THE FILMMAKERS
JULIE BERTUCCELLI (director)
Born in 1968, Julie Bertuccelli worked as assistant director to several well-known
filmmakers including Otar Iosseliani, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Bertrand Tavernier,
Emmanuel Finkiel and Rithy Panh. Since then she has directed a number of
documentaries before moving on to feature filmmaking with Since Otar Left...
Bertucelli studied philosophy before being trained as a documentary film-maker at
the Ateliers Varan in Paris.
Features:
2003 SINCE OTAR LEFT...
Documentaries:
2001 UN MONDE EN FUSION (A World in Fusion)
2000 VOYAGES VOYAGES – THE AEOLIAN ISLES
1999 BIENVENUE AU GRAND MAGASIN (Welcome to the Department Store)
1998 FABRIQUE DES JUGES (Judge Factory)
1994 UNE LIBERTE (One Liberty)
1993 UN METIER COMMES LES AUTRES (A Job as Good as Another)
BERNARD RENUCCI (screenwriter)
Bernard Renucci has written several documentary films directed by Julie
Bertuccelli, as well as a number of TV dramas. He directed his first documentary
film in 2002.
ROGER BOHBOT (screenwriter)
Roger Bohbot adapted the screenplay for Since Otar Left... He has written
screenplays for Eric Zonca, Orso Miret, Chritsophe Blanc and Arnaud Desplechin.
CHRISTOPHE POLLOCK (cinematographer)
Formerly assistant to William Lubtchansky, Christophe Pollock has shot films for
directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Doillon, Eric
Rochant, Claude Miller, Claire Devers, Jeanne Labrune, Rithy Panh, Pascal Bonitzer
and Manuel Pradal.
EMMANUEL DE CHAUVIGNY (production designer)
Emmanuel de Chauvigny has designed films for Otar Iosseliani, Jacques Rivette,
Michael Haneke and Pascal Bonitzer.
EMMANUELLE CASTRO (editor)
Emmanuelle Castro has worked with filmmakers including Louis Malle, Laurence
Ferreira Barbosa, Emmanuel Finkiel, Nicole Garcia and Jean-François Stévenin.
EMMANUEL FINKIEL (technical consultant)
Emmanuel Finkiel wrote and directed Madame Jacques sur La Croisette (winner of
the French Cesar for Best Short Film, 1997), and Voyages (winner of the Young
Audience Prize at Cannes, 1999; and winner of the French Cesar for Best First Film
and Best Editing, 2000).
YAËL FOGIEL (executive producer)
An Israeli citizen and fifteen-year resident in France, Yaël Fogiel established her
company, Les Films du Poisson, in 1995 with Laetitia Gonzalez and they won the
Hachette Young Producer Prize in 1997. Together they have produced more than 60
short, documentary and TV films. Fogiel produced her first feature film in 1998,
Emmanuel Finkiel’s Voyages. Since then Les Films du Poisson has focused on
features, including Motus by Laurence Ferreira Barbosa and La Chose Publique by
Mathieu Amalric, as well as Since Otar Left...
SINCE OTAR LEFT...
A F I L M B Y J U L I E B E R T U C C E L L I
Eka Esther Gorintin
Marina Nino Khomassouridze
Ada Dinara Droukarova
Tenguiz Temour Kalandadze
Roussiko Roussoudan Bolkvadze
Alexo Sacha Sarichvili
Niko Douta Skhirtladze
Dora
Mzia Eristavi
Neighbour (Mika)
Zoura Natroshvili
Cardiologist
Nodar Mdzinarishvili
First Businessman
Jacques Fleury
First Postwoman
Manon Abashidze
University Professor
Irina Tukhulova
Father Alexi
Iago Demetrashvili
Photographer
Vaja Djalagania
Flight Attendant
Sarah Chaumette
Dora’s Son
Misha Eristavi
Official
Alexandre Makharoblishvili
Factory Manager
Misha Mujiri
Second Businessman
Frédéric Payen
Second Postwoman
Manana Taralashvili
Neighbor Woman
Medea Roinshvili
Otar (in photograph)
Gocha Darbaidze
Cab Driver
Malanime Sissokho
Directed by
Julie Bertuccelli
Screenplay by
Julie Bertuccelli and Bernard Renucci
Adapted by
Roger Bohbot
Cinematography
Christophe Pollock
Sound
Henri Morelle
Picture Edit
Emmanuelle Castro
Sound Edit
Olivier Goinard
Sound Mix
Thomas Gauder
1st AD
Gabrièle Roux
Continuity
Els Rastelli
Executive Producer
Yaël Fogiel
Casting
Stéphane Batut
Production Design Emmanuel de Chauvigny
Make-up & Hair
Mzia Kentchiachvili
Costumes
Nathalie Raoul
Production Management
Mat Troi Day
Production
Yaël Fogiel
Associate Producer
Laetitia Gonzalez
Co-producer, Belgium
Diana Elbaum
Line Producer, Georgia
Jana Sardlichvili
A Franco-Belgian co-production by Les Films du Poisson
with ARTE France Cinema – Entre Chien et Loup – Studio 99
with the participation of Canal +, with the support of the French National Film Centre, Eurimages,
Film Centre of the French-speaking Community of Belgium, Wallon TV Distributors, in collaboration
with RTBF (Belgian TV), with the support of Procirep, the Loire Valley Production Centre, the Centre
Region's writers' assistance programme and the Beaumarchais Association.
Developed with ACE – European Cinema Workshops
MUSIC
“Liberté la Nuit”, “Valse Nostalgique”
by Antoine Duhamel,
performed by the Rosamonde Quartet and Elisabeth Saglier Duhamel on piano,
conducted by Leonardo Gasparini and recorded in the Lebanese Church
by Igor Kirkwood
“Spiegel im Speigel”, “Für Alina”
by Arvo Pärt
“Poissons”
by Dato Evgenidze, “Concert Horoscope”,
Auditorium de Saint-Germain-des-Prés
France, 2003, 102 mins, Color, 35mm, 1.85:1, Dolby SRD
In French, Georgian and Russian with English subtitles.
A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
247 CENTRE ST • 2ND FL • NEW YORK • NY 10013
www.zeitgeistfilms.com • mail@zeitgeistfilms.com
(212) 274-1989 • FAX (212) 274-1644
