What do we see when we look at the sky torrent
What do we see when we look at the sky torrent
Section: Horizons
Year: 2021
Lisa and Giorgi lose each other before they can even properly meet. Can they overcome the curse that has separated them? A love letter to one summer town, to cinema, and to football, written with infectious enthusiasm and playful exaggeration. Seasoned with dashes of self-deprecation, the film took the FIPRESCI Award at this year’s Berlinale.
Synopsis
While the outdoor cafés in Kutaisi are busy installing screens for the football championships, and the local dogs fight for the best mate, Lisa and Giorgi lose each other before they can even properly meet. Can they overcome the curse that has separated them? A love letter to one summer town, to cinema, and to football, written with playful exaggeration and an ability to impart its enthusiasm onto the viewer. Through the use of voiceovers and intertitles, the narrative style calls attention to itself and its desire to tell a story. The film’s visual poetry, meanwhile, is underscored by a soundtrack that creates a comic counterpart, and its self-deprecation prevents it from sinking into unbearable pathos at moments when it reveals the sincerity of its love.
About the director
Alexandre Koberidze (1984, Georgia). Selected filmography: Colophon (2015, short), Let the Summer Never Come Again (Lass den Sommer nie wieder kommen, 2017), The Perfect Spectator (2017, short), Linger on Some Pale Blue Dot (2018, short doc.), What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?, 2021).
Contacts
Cercamon
134 Al Hamoor St, Jumeirah 3, PO Box, 416 207, Dubai
United Arab Emirates
Tel: +971 566 063 824
E-mail: [email protected]
Letterboxd — Your life in film
Where to watch
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
2021 ‘რას ვხედავთ, როდესაც ცას ვუყურებთ?’ Directed by Alexandre Koberidze
Synopsis
In the Georgian riverside town of Kutaisi, summertime romance and World Cup fever are in the air. After a pair of chance encounters, pharmacist Lisa and soccer player Giorgi find their plans for a date undone when they both awaken magically transformed with no way to recognize each other.
Director
Producers
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Composer
Sound
Costumes
Make-Up
Studios
Countries
Language
Alternative Titles
Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?, Sous le soleil de Koutaïssi, Sous le ciel de Koutaïssi, Was sehen wir, wenn wir zum Himmel schauen
Genres
150 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this film
Popular reviews
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Film romantic gaze explored. A series of passions, exchanges, misses all made the more evocative because Koberidze is looking at it and giving it the right amount of film intensity. A film so generous Messi gets to win a World Cup.
Movies can truly be anything, and the beauty of Alexandre Koberidze’s lyrical and ineffably romantic “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” is how it reminds us of that — time and again — during almost every one of its meandering 150 minutes.
Nevertheless, a crucial scene towards the beginning stands out for the way it epitomizes that magic. A soccer player named Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and a knowledgeable young pharmacist named Lisa (Ani Karseladze) have just enjoyed an extremely Lanthimos-esque meet-cute along the banks of the Rioni River in the ancient Georgian city of Kutaisi; we’ve only seen them interact from the knees down or through nighttime long shots lensed from so far away that these…
AFI 2021: film #1
unfolds like an art house fairytale but with a million different kinds of ideas crammed together, some of them sticking and a lot of them falling flat. it was beautifully shot and often charmingly fun, but just far too long in length and narratively not for me. a very interesting open to the fest this year to be sure
That’s what it’s like when you love — you worry.
So that’s what magic feels like. It’s the heat of the sun, the sound of children playing, the uniting atmosphere of a major sporting event. The moment when you close your eyes and let the film take over. Star-crossed lovers gets a painful refresh to its meaning, though it’s easy to unintentionally let the main narrative slide when it feels like you live in the same town as Lisa and Giorgi, suddenly following the daily mundane. This one is for all of us who want to be the kid in the «I am nice and also rich» shirt. It’s most likely my lockdown brain talking, but the past year hasn’t been for nothing if I’m finally allowing myself to simply be swept away.
Aleksandre Koberidze’s magical realist love story is a wondrous film that toys with the cinematic form in many idiosyncratic and innovative ways. Blending various different genres to craft a stunning symphony of whimsical romance and playful unpredictability. It surely won’t work for everyone with its overbearing fairy tale-esque narration and lengthy runtime, but I found this film that simultaneously works as a fable-like romance, a love-letter to the city of Kutaisi, and an ode to dogs, music & soccer, to be a wholly unique experience that doesn’t waste a single frame. It’s a film that shouldn’t work whatsoever, but one that I was completely transfixed by from beginning to end.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is a lyrical meditation on life. It never answers the question its unusually long title raises, but instead, it tells us that everyone’s sky is different. Although every character in the film is living their life in front of the same backdrop, a city in western Georgia named Kutaisi, each person perceives their environment differently—ranging from Lisa and Georgi, the protagonists, to carefree children playing in the streets to stray dogs in search of their favorite place to watch soccer games.
The film opens with Lisa’s and Giorgi’s incidental meeting. What begins as a tale about love at first sight soon turns into an observational, almost dreamy film with, as…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I could feel the director’s yearning for romance, community, hope and peace in this one. In one of the final moments where Giorgi decided to walk with Lisa rather than watch the soccer game, I could feel his desire for companionship and being a part of the ebb and flow of life most markedly. A film that also stands up for animals and the planet and deconstructs the hierarchy putting everyone and everything on an equal plane. We need adult fairytales to survive these times of despair and mass suffering. Really quite lovely if you can persist through the lulls and grab onto the details as required. At a time where filmmakers could do with offering us a bit of hope and belief, Alexandre Koberidze delivers.
I love art that make me aware of my own breath. Things that leave you alone, that try not to bother you. Where your thoughts mingle with what’s dreamt by the film, expansive and doddering. Kiarostami. Tati. Tsai. Warhol. This movie. People are projecting preciousness or “twee”-ness (a generic word I detest) onto this. I don’t get it. I don’t see it. Is fairy-tale logic inherently precious? That seems like a willful misunderstanding of its curious design. Too many films hold your hand in a death grip until you reach their banal conclusions; this one doesn’t, even when you know the ending a mile away. Even when you know the ending in the first minute of 150. Being ahead of…
that’s what it’s like when you love: you worry.
with a whimsical story, and a mise en scene that would make bresson blush, this is as spellbinding as any film in recent memory.
what do we see when we look at the sky? i don’t know, but perhaps it’s the same thing if we allow cinema to touch our hearts, and all it takes is to close our eyes and count:
she was thinking because she was not sure, if this, what she was looking for, could be made visible.
Attention!
Dear Audience
Please close your eyes after you hear the first signal
When you hear the second signal, open your eyes again
Trois. Deux. Un. Signal sonore. Je ferme les yeux, comme les intertitres me l’ont demandé. Je ne sais plus ce qu’il se passe sur l’écran de mon téléviseur. Tout est noir. Lentement, des oiseaux naissent du silence laissé par l’alarme. Je les écoute me chanter leurs chansons. Je sens des larmes coincées sous mes paupières. Deuxième signal sonore. J’ouvre les yeux. Les larmes se libèrent sur mes joues. J’ai une épiphanie. C’est le premier film que je vois de ma vie. En absence d’image, j’ai redécouvert le cinéma.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? est parfait pour accompagner la neige d’avril. Comme la neige de printemps, il est empreint de magie. Il est un vent de douceur et de mélancolie, qui annonce les beaux jours à venir.
A most wholesome bridge between Kiarostami and Bresson. I’m both ecstatic and bewildered that images like this are still being produced in 2021.
Letterboxd — Your life in film
Where to watch
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
2021 ‘რას ვხედავთ, როდესაც ცას ვუყურებთ?’ Directed by Alexandre Koberidze
Synopsis
In the Georgian riverside town of Kutaisi, summertime romance and World Cup fever are in the air. After a pair of chance encounters, pharmacist Lisa and soccer player Giorgi find their plans for a date undone when they both awaken magically transformed with no way to recognize each other.
Director
Producers
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Composer
Sound
Costumes
Make-Up
Studios
Countries
Language
Alternative Titles
Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?, Sous le soleil de Koutaïssi, Sous le ciel de Koutaïssi, Was sehen wir, wenn wir zum Himmel schauen
Genres
150 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this film
Popular reviews
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Film romantic gaze explored. A series of passions, exchanges, misses all made the more evocative because Koberidze is looking at it and giving it the right amount of film intensity. A film so generous Messi gets to win a World Cup.
Movies can truly be anything, and the beauty of Alexandre Koberidze’s lyrical and ineffably romantic “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” is how it reminds us of that — time and again — during almost every one of its meandering 150 minutes.
Nevertheless, a crucial scene towards the beginning stands out for the way it epitomizes that magic. A soccer player named Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and a knowledgeable young pharmacist named Lisa (Ani Karseladze) have just enjoyed an extremely Lanthimos-esque meet-cute along the banks of the Rioni River in the ancient Georgian city of Kutaisi; we’ve only seen them interact from the knees down or through nighttime long shots lensed from so far away that these…
AFI 2021: film #1
unfolds like an art house fairytale but with a million different kinds of ideas crammed together, some of them sticking and a lot of them falling flat. it was beautifully shot and often charmingly fun, but just far too long in length and narratively not for me. a very interesting open to the fest this year to be sure
That’s what it’s like when you love — you worry.
So that’s what magic feels like. It’s the heat of the sun, the sound of children playing, the uniting atmosphere of a major sporting event. The moment when you close your eyes and let the film take over. Star-crossed lovers gets a painful refresh to its meaning, though it’s easy to unintentionally let the main narrative slide when it feels like you live in the same town as Lisa and Giorgi, suddenly following the daily mundane. This one is for all of us who want to be the kid in the «I am nice and also rich» shirt. It’s most likely my lockdown brain talking, but the past year hasn’t been for nothing if I’m finally allowing myself to simply be swept away.
Aleksandre Koberidze’s magical realist love story is a wondrous film that toys with the cinematic form in many idiosyncratic and innovative ways. Blending various different genres to craft a stunning symphony of whimsical romance and playful unpredictability. It surely won’t work for everyone with its overbearing fairy tale-esque narration and lengthy runtime, but I found this film that simultaneously works as a fable-like romance, a love-letter to the city of Kutaisi, and an ode to dogs, music & soccer, to be a wholly unique experience that doesn’t waste a single frame. It’s a film that shouldn’t work whatsoever, but one that I was completely transfixed by from beginning to end.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is a lyrical meditation on life. It never answers the question its unusually long title raises, but instead, it tells us that everyone’s sky is different. Although every character in the film is living their life in front of the same backdrop, a city in western Georgia named Kutaisi, each person perceives their environment differently—ranging from Lisa and Georgi, the protagonists, to carefree children playing in the streets to stray dogs in search of their favorite place to watch soccer games.
The film opens with Lisa’s and Giorgi’s incidental meeting. What begins as a tale about love at first sight soon turns into an observational, almost dreamy film with, as…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I could feel the director’s yearning for romance, community, hope and peace in this one. In one of the final moments where Giorgi decided to walk with Lisa rather than watch the soccer game, I could feel his desire for companionship and being a part of the ebb and flow of life most markedly. A film that also stands up for animals and the planet and deconstructs the hierarchy putting everyone and everything on an equal plane. We need adult fairytales to survive these times of despair and mass suffering. Really quite lovely if you can persist through the lulls and grab onto the details as required. At a time where filmmakers could do with offering us a bit of hope and belief, Alexandre Koberidze delivers.
I love art that make me aware of my own breath. Things that leave you alone, that try not to bother you. Where your thoughts mingle with what’s dreamt by the film, expansive and doddering. Kiarostami. Tati. Tsai. Warhol. This movie. People are projecting preciousness or “twee”-ness (a generic word I detest) onto this. I don’t get it. I don’t see it. Is fairy-tale logic inherently precious? That seems like a willful misunderstanding of its curious design. Too many films hold your hand in a death grip until you reach their banal conclusions; this one doesn’t, even when you know the ending a mile away. Even when you know the ending in the first minute of 150. Being ahead of…
that’s what it’s like when you love: you worry.
with a whimsical story, and a mise en scene that would make bresson blush, this is as spellbinding as any film in recent memory.
what do we see when we look at the sky? i don’t know, but perhaps it’s the same thing if we allow cinema to touch our hearts, and all it takes is to close our eyes and count:
she was thinking because she was not sure, if this, what she was looking for, could be made visible.
Attention!
Dear Audience
Please close your eyes after you hear the first signal
When you hear the second signal, open your eyes again
Trois. Deux. Un. Signal sonore. Je ferme les yeux, comme les intertitres me l’ont demandé. Je ne sais plus ce qu’il se passe sur l’écran de mon téléviseur. Tout est noir. Lentement, des oiseaux naissent du silence laissé par l’alarme. Je les écoute me chanter leurs chansons. Je sens des larmes coincées sous mes paupières. Deuxième signal sonore. J’ouvre les yeux. Les larmes se libèrent sur mes joues. J’ai une épiphanie. C’est le premier film que je vois de ma vie. En absence d’image, j’ai redécouvert le cinéma.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? est parfait pour accompagner la neige d’avril. Comme la neige de printemps, il est empreint de magie. Il est un vent de douceur et de mélancolie, qui annonce les beaux jours à venir.
A most wholesome bridge between Kiarostami and Bresson. I’m both ecstatic and bewildered that images like this are still being produced in 2021.
‘What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?’ Review: But I Digress
Two strangers become near-lovers in a movie that invites you to think more about the perfectly, simply, ordinary life around them.
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this article
When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.
“What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” It’s a good title and better question and, much like the movie attached to it, the answer easily spirals off in different directions. We look at the sky itself, of course, the dark and light clouds. We look at rainbows and lightning, smog and smoke, tall trees and taller buildings, soaring birds and buzzing insects, though in practice we don’t often truly look at the world, which means we don’t see it or its everyday wonders, terrors and adventures — which is to this movie’s point.
Pleasing, exasperating, poignant and coy, “What Do We See” is a loose, exceedingly leisurely meander through a series of momentous and banal moments that take place during an amble through the Georgian city of Kutaisi. It’s a romantic tale of two bewitched people, though the filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze is far more interested in the small dramas continually unfolding in the perfectly ordinary world around them — sometimes perfect in its very ordinariness. He’s interested in children playing in the park, dogs jauntily sauntering in the streets, a cafe owner hustling for better business — all the stuff that most movies use as mortar to hold the narrative blocks together.
Soon after “What Do We See” begins, it seems to be settling into storytelling gear with an unusually staged and framed encounter. The meeting starts with a tiny bird, a sparrow perhaps, flying into an otherwise empty shot of a sidewalk. The bird picks up a twig and just as it flies out of the shot, two strangers, Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze) and Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze), enter the frame from opposite directions, accidentally bumping into each other. She drops her book, he picks it up. They exchange apologies and continue walking, though in the wrong direction. They turn around and bump up again. The book drops, they go in the wrong direction, course correct and exit to go about their day.
Lisa is wearing red pants and Mary Jane flats without socks; he’s wearing brown pants and lace-up shoes with socks. You know this because throughout this amusingly, precisely choreographed encounter, the camera remains fixed on the lower part of their bodies, cutting off just above their knees. You want to look up but can’t, and only see their faces when they’ve gone off in their separate lives, where she works as a pharmacist and he seems to be a professional soccer player. Later that night, they run into each other again, though it’s hard to tell because the camera is now at a great distance. This time, they make a date to meet at a cafe, a promise they involuntarily don’t keep.
That’s the story though this scarcely describes the movie, which soon folds in a dollop of magical realism that finds the characters transformed into two different-looking people and now embodied by other actors, with Lisa 2 played by Ani Karseladze and Giorgi 2 by Giorgi Bochorishvili. This metamorphosis puts a kibosh on their date (they can’t recognize each other) and creates other problems because neither can remember how to do their jobs. Yet as his characters grapple with their new identities, Koberidze (who also narrates) keeps spinning off here and there to look at, and talk about, well, everything else, if mostly romping children, wandering dogs and lots and lots of soccer.
The cumulative charms of these narrative byways fade as Koberidze’s meandering extends to two and a half hours, though the end section is glorious and there’s much to appreciate about a movie that reminds you that at times the best parts of a shaggy-dog story are the ostensibly pointless ones.
“What Do We See” is a fairly obvious labyrinth (you won’t get lost), but in demanding so much of your time it asks you to consider what we see when we watch the sky — or a film. Most movies seize your attention with noise and nonsense but soon fade. By contrast, though I muttered about Koberidze’s pokiness while watching, I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie afterward. I railed against it (in my head) and kept railing and, after a while, realized, well, I really did like it, after all.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
Not rated. In Georgian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. In theaters.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
2021, Drama, 2h 30m
What to know
critics consensus
Refreshingly unique and ultimately enchanting, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky is an ode to love that finds magic in the mundane. Read critic reviews
Where to watch
Rate And Review
Rate this movie
Oof, that was Rotten.
Meh, it passed the time.
It’s good – I’d recommend it.
So Fresh: Absolute Must See!
What did you think of the movie? (optional)
You’re almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.
How did you buy your ticket?
Let’s get your review verified.
AMCTheatres.com or AMC App New
Cinemark Coming Soon
We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.
Regal Coming Soon
We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.
Theater box office or somewhere else
By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie.
You’re almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.
Rate this movie
Oof, that was Rotten.
Meh, it passed the time.
It’s good – I’d recommend it.
So Fresh: Absolute Must See!
What did you think of the movie? (optional)
How did you buy your ticket?
AMCTheatres.com or AMC App New
Cinemark Coming Soon
We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.
Regal Coming Soon
We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.
Theater box office or somewhere else
By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie.
You haven’t finished your review yet, want to submit as-is?
You can always edit your review after.
Are you sure?
Verified reviews are considered more trustworthy by fellow moviegoers.
Want to submit changes to your review before closing?
Done Already? A few more words can help others decide if it’s worth watching
They won’t be able to see your review if you only submit your rating.
Done Already? A few more words can help others decide if it’s worth watching
They won’t be able to see your review if you only submit your rating.
The image is an example of a ticket confirmation email that AMC sent you when you purchased your ticket. Your Ticket Confirmation # is located under the header in your email that reads «Your Ticket Reservation Details». Just below that it reads «Ticket Confirmation#:» followed by a 10-digit number. This 10-digit number is your confirmation number.
Your AMC Ticket Confirmation# can be found in your order confirmation email.