Brigands begins at the end; one of the themes of Paris-based Georgian director Otar Iosseliani's innovative new film is that where power is concerned, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Caustic in tone, elegant in construction, and bitter in its prognosis for the future, the film cleverly interweaves Georgia in the Middle Ages, in the Communist 1930s and 1940s, and in the grip of the recent civil war, with a contemporary Paris of arms dealers and war refugees. Throughout these layered slices of history, actors appear and reappear, sometimes as if they are each other's dreams or lost reflections, making us aware that no matter what the period or the reigning ideology, the games of power, opportunism, and survival are quite similar.-Irina Leimbacher