Film Director And Poet Otar Iosseliani Passed Away

• 17.12.2023, 16:40

He called Putin ‘second after Hitler’.

On December 17, Georgian film director, screenwriter, and actor Otar Iosseliani passed away. This was reported by the Rustavi 2 TV channel.

According to channel sources, the director, who left for France in the early 1980s due to disagreement with Soviet censorship, recently arrived in Tbilisi and passed away there. Relatives also confirmed his departure, writes 1tv.g.

Journalist and photographer Yuri Rost also spoke about Iosseliani’s death.

“We are in grief. Otar Iosseliani, a great film director, an amazing person and my closest friend, has passed away,” he wrote on Telegram.

In March 2022, commenting on the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an interview with the Rain TV channel, now banned in Russia, Iosseliani called Russian President Vladimir Putin “second after Adolf [Hitler - Ed.].”

“If he is sane, and not just a scoundrel, then the number of victims on his hands, which are covered in blood up to his elbows, will not just get away like that, I think. And in general, having a murderer at the head of the state is simply unbearable. It was only his words that Ukraine is full of fascists, drug addicts and scoundrels... He’d better look at himself in a mirror. He’s probably admiring himself,” said the Georgian filmmaker, answering a question about the role of the head of the aggressor country in history.

Commenting on the future of Russia, Iosseliani said that it is “more than 50% populated by cattle.”

“Cattle means animals that don’t think, don’t understand, aren’t interested in anything, don’t know anything, don’t have a conscience, because conscience comes with knowledge of something, at least some rules,” said the filmmaker.

Iosseliani believed that “the madman [Putin - Ed.] got out of his straitjacket and they have not yet come up with a new one for him.”