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Poster for Repentance

Repentance

A masterful, nightmarish political vision from Georgia's foremost modern director!

1987 · 2h 33m · PG Comedy, Drama
Directed by Tengiz Abuladze

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Overview

The day after his funeral, the corpse of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, turns up in his son's garden. Although it is secretly reburied, the corpse keeps returning until the police capture the local woman who is responsible. This woman says that Varlam should never be laid to rest since his Stalin-like reign of terror led to the disappearance of her family and friends.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
67%
Tomatometer
Fresh

[Repentance] is lit with bursts of satiric humor, with music, bits of opera and great flights of surreal imagery, which only serve to intensify its growing horror. And it is never less than physically gorgeous.

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times
Rotten

Repentance would seem mordantly funny if its wit, like that of its central character, weren't also so cruel.

Janet Maslin, New York Times
Rotten

Its significance as a social and historical document far outstrips its value as art.

Hal Hinson, Washington Post
Fresh

Tengiz Abuladze's dreamlike allegorical fantasy about Stalinism, as well as despotism in general, is probably the best known and almost certainly one of the best Soviet films to have surfaced as a result of glasnost.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Rotten

The result is neither as minatory nor as moving as it thinks it is, despite some arresting surrealist images and the performance of Makharadze as Varlam.

Tony Rayns, Time Out

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