Granny wants Stalin

This is surely the only film ever made about a pro-Stalin granny. Set in contemporary Georgia, it features three generations of women - Granny Eka (Esther Gorintin), her daughter, Marina (Nino Khomassouridze), and granddaughter, Ada ( Dinara Droukarova). They live together in a crumbling block where the water is always on the blink, the electricity fades, and Granny recalls the organised Communist days with unflinching enthusiasm. Eka sits by the phone waiting to hear from her son, a doctor who left for a better life in Paris. Otar writes and calls until he is killed in an accident on a building site. Fearing this news might finish Eka off, Marina and Ada pretend that Otar is still alive. They compose letters from him and read them to Eka while she lies on her bed in the gold-yellow evening light.

Director Julie Bertuccelli presents Georgia as a place that people leave: students flit across the border, doctors quit to break their necks falling off Parisian scaffolding-Sometimes Eka seems to be the town's only permanent resident, watching the houses and squares grow quieter around her.

The city of Tbilisi comes across as a sprawling car-boot sale. Everyone is selling little bits of the past - vases decorated with images of Lenin, a favourite scarf, a dog's bowl. But it's not all tragedy. At the family's country dacha, the pears are ripe on the trees, and the last red of the sun comes in through the curtains. Back in Tbilisi, Eka treats herself to a fairground ride and a couple of cigarettes. Little moments, enormous impact.

Since Otar Left (Depuis Qu'Otar Est Parti)
Cert: 15