Georgian film-maker Otar Iosseliani dies at 89

Otar Iosseliani, an award-winning film-maker, has died in his native Georgia, his French distributor said Sunday. He was 89.

Iosseliani made most of his films in France, where he was free to make films that were sometimes overtly critical of his home country. His death on Saturday night was confirmed by Regine Vial, from the Les Films du Losange company.

Georgia’s prime minister Irakli Garibashvili said he felt “great sadness” when he heard the news, adding: “Otar Iosseliani had his own style, which is only characteristic of great film directors. His movies have gained international recognition for our country on numerous occasions.”

Iosseliani was born in Tbilisi and studied at the VGIK cinema school in Moscow in the 1950s. His early films in Georgia – Falling Leaves and Pastorale – won him an international following.

In the early 1980s he moved to France where he would live much of the rest of his life and where he made Favourites of the Moon, which won a special jury prize at the Venice film festival.

It was the first in a series of wins at Venice for his films.

Iosseliani won the Louis-Delluc prize in France in 1999 for Farewell, Home Sweet Home, in which he also played the cheerful alcoholic husband and father. He also headed one of the Cannes film festival’s juries in 2000.

And in 2002 he picked up two prizes, including the Silver Bear for best director, for Monday Morning at the Berlin film festival.

His films were known for their imagination and ironic aloofness.

He once said he wanted his films to be a “gift to someone I don’t know but who has the same ideas as I do”.