Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2021 | Otar’s Death

A car accident upends the lives of two families, providing one with hope and the other despair in this tragicomic drama from Georgian director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze. Written by Elmar Imanov and Bliadze, Otar’s Death is Bliadze’s feature debut.

Sixteen-year-old Nika (Iva Kimeridze) lives with his mother Keti (Nutsa Kukhianidze), although it often feels as though their roles are reversed; Keti stays out late partying with friends and constantly asks Nika for money, whereas Nika helps his hungover mother in the mornings by providing fresh coffee and a helping hand up from their couch where she crashed overnight.

Nika’s frustration with his mother’s unreliable behaviour reaches a tipping point when Keti abandons him for some friends during a day trip to a lake in the countryside. As day turns to night, Nika gives up waiting and takes the car to find her. Their lives are forever altered when Nika accidentally hits an old man—the eponymous Otar. Otar’s headstrong daughter, Tamara (Eka Chavleishvili), informs Keti that her family won’t press charges if Keti compensates them with a large sum of money. Desperate to keep Nika from prison, Keti agrees. She scrambles to source the money over the course of one day, while Nika spirals into a dark place. Meanwhile, Tamara and her son, Oto (Archil Makalatia), plan Otar’s funeral. While Oto mourns his grandfather, Tamara considers how their lives will improve from their impending compensation.

While the serious nature of the plot threatens to drag the film into dark territory, and sometimes does, a narrative twist provides a tragicomic element that keeps the film’s metaphorical head above water. The film doesn’t quite manage to balance its shifting tones, but the levity is nevertheless very welcome.

While Otar’s Death attempts to contextualize characters’ behaviours in order to provide insight into the two families and imbue the viewer with empathy for both, this approach occasionally fails. In particular, the narrative turn in which Nika, struggling to come to terms with his role in the accident, sexually assaults his best friend, Ana (Taki Mumladze), is a distasteful and out-of-place attempt to show Nika’s inner self-destruction, and it occurs at the expense of his friend and sexual violence against women. It’s an odd and unnecessary narrative choice. The film then urges us to empathize with Nika as a victim when he confronts Ana at the club demanding forgiveness and Ana’s brother and his friends beat Nika up for his actions.

While the main characters do not particularly endear themselves to viewers, they are nevertheless compelling to follow as the film builds suspense around the narrative twist and Keti’s search for money. In Keti and Tamara the film finds more layered characters with intriguing development. The two women share little in common, but both are strong-willed and determined to see their goals through. Keti initially strikes the viewer as a stunted teenager, but with her son’s future imperilled she finds herself suddenly thrust into a role of responsibility that she clumsily, but resolutely, takes on. Tamara, meanwhile, is a bullheaded figure who dreams of starting a new life in Tbilisi. She is quiet but strict, and slow to forgive. Her son resents that the only fondness she shows is for the cello she plays reverently in the shed in their yard, a shed Oto is forbidden to enter. Tamara’s layers are harder to peel back, but we learn more about her upbringing and come to understand the opportunity she sees in her father’s death.

 Overall, the film engages viewers by providing much-needed moments of levity that also heighten the narrative suspense. We are keen to see how it all plays out, and the film answers with an ending that gratifies viewers whilst maintaining a certain level of ambiguity. Indeed, in its final moments the film blends comedy and irony to brilliant effect.

Otar’s Death premiered in the East of the West competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the largest film festival in the Czech Republic.

Score: B-