Falling Leaves is typical of the best Georgian films in seeming light and low-key on the surface, until the satire begins to cut very deep. The film begins with observations of awkward adolescence in the story of a young boy who gets his first job in a wine factory. Soon he notices that the manager is fiddling his quotas, and eventually learns the hard way that corruption is the only way to get by in an economic system that works one way in theory, another in day-to-day practice.