No doubt Julie Bertuccelli's first feature film would please her mentor Krzysztof Kieslowski. She served as assistant director on Three Colors: Blue and White, and Kieslowski's humanist values are present in Bertuccelli's own material. Set in the decaying Georgian capital, present-day Tbilisi, Otar is the poignant story of three generations of women: daughter (Ada), mother (Marina), and crone (Eka), who struggle with one another, themselves, and the aftermath of political upheavals. An unseen Otar is the nucleus around which all three women's lives revolve. Having moved to Paris for a better life, he occasionally writes or calls his mother, a 90-year-old arthritically hobbled matriarch, who lives for contact with her idealized son. When Otar dies accidentally, Ada and Marina decide to protect Eka from this shattering news. Marina convinces her reluctant daughter to write letters simulating Otar's handwriting, and the emotionally claustrophobic young woman creates an increasingly hopeful world for herself as she writes of Otar's enriching cultural and social life in Paris. Eka is determined to see her beloved son before she dies, so the trio heads to Paris. Superbly written and acted (especially Esther Gorintin's sublime Eka), Otar inhabits the fine line between tragedy and comedy as it asks: How far will we go to protect those we love?