A chance encounter at the school gates in Kutaisi. The falling of a book and its awkward picking up is reminiscent of scenes in other films. Lisa, a young pharmacologist and medical student, and Giorgi, a footballer, are destined to go on another date, but they do not tell each other their names. As their instantaneous feelings take over their worlds, everyday situations, street dogs, objects and footballs become oracles and fateful signs. But their unsaid names also bring a curse, as the narrator explains: the next morning, Lisa and Giorgi wake up in strangers’ bodies.

A modernised fairy tale in which two lovers in an ancient Georgian city are doomed to not being able to recognise each other. Nominated for the Golden Bear and winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2021 Berlinale, romantic but aimless poetry is the most apt description for this internationally acclaimed film by Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze. An impressionistic work, it fuses influences from 1970s cinema, Parajanov’s visual meditations, Kurosawa’s fate-enslaved characters, and observational documentary. Dogs, children, music, ice cream and the city of Kutaisi itself become free verse in this cinematic sonnet.