The great Georgian filmmaker left us at the end of last year. This year, he would have turned 90.

“Farewell, Home Sweet Home” is one of Iosseliani’s wittiest comedies and has been hailed as his best work of recent times.

A good film is a film without words, Iosseliani used to say. Not too many words are spoken in this film either.

An aristocratic family lives a double life in a stately castle. The drunkard father – played by Iosseliani himself – who dances to the tune of the business-minded mother, and his adventurous son, who hangs out with tramps, are both rebellious against the values of the bourgeois society, desiring to abandon their birth status and etiquette. Their paths intersect in humorous, sometimes absurd ways with many colourful Parisians.

The mosaic ensemble cast film won critical acclaim at the European Film Awards in 1999.

Tiit Tuumalu