★★★★☆
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is a quiet celebration of life’s fleeting beauty and the everyday mysteries we often overlook.
Have you ever stopped to notice how clouds drift across the sky, how a gentle breeze stirs the emerald leaves, how music spills from open windows, how couples hold hands, how old men play chess, how dogs roam the park — how the hidden rhythm of life flows quietly all around us?
Alexandre Koberidze’s 2021 film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? gives you 150 minutes to immerse yourself in these magical, often unnoticed moments of daily life. Shot beautifully on 16mm by cinematographer Faraz Fesharaki, the film is charming and romantic, a gentle take on love and longing. Its tender storytelling — both whimsical and profound — makes it impossible to leave anyone unmoved.
Set in Kutaisi during the frenzy of the World Cup, the film follows two star-crossed lovers: footballer Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and pharmacist Lisa (Ani Karseladze). They meet by chance — several times — and finally arrange their first real date. But on the morning of their rendezvous, both awaken transformed, their appearances mysteriously altered by the evil eye. As new versions of themselves (now played by Giorgi Bochorishvili and Oliko Barbakadze, respectively), they no longer recognise one another.
What follows is not a traditional romantic arc but an enchanted, fable-like drift through Kutaisi’s everyday life — children playing, pranksters teasing locals, neighbours gathering to watch the final football match, and most memorably, the city’s beloved small dogs, who appear throughout the film like gentle spirits. These fleeting characters and subtle vignettes weave a rich, poetic tapestry of Kutaisi’s urban fabric.
Music plays a central role in shaping the film’s atmosphere — much of it composed by the director’s brother, Giorgi Koberidze — and evokes the charm of silent cinema. There is little dialogue; instead, the story unfolds through voice-over, narrated by Alexandre Koberidze with warmth and understated lyricism.
There are also a series of meta-moments, as a pair of documentary filmmakers (played by Koberidze’s own parents) appear throughout the film, searching for fifty couples to interview about love. A quiet sense of anticipation permeates these scenes — the hope that Giorgi and Lisa might somehow cross paths again, especially when a well-meaning casting assistant encourages them to pose as an on-screen couple.
But What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is more than a whimsical love story. It is also a subtle but powerful commentary on the environmental crisis.
Woven between moments of beauty and stillness are reminders of the damage we inflict on the natural world — reflections that interrupt the spell just enough to remind us of what’s at stake. When the film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival, Koberidze dedicated the award to the Rioni Valley Guardians — a grassroots movement protesting the construction of destructive hydroelectric projects in western Georgia. This gesture grounds the film’s dreamy poetics in an ongoing ecological struggle.
As I write this review on a sun-soaked summer afternoon in Tbilisi, a breeze flutters the curtain beside me, I hear children laughing in the courtyard below, and the sky above is impossibly blue, dotted with soft white clouds. And I think — as Koberidze seems to suggest — that life’s smallest joys may, in the end, be the most essential.
Film details: What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021), directed by Alexandre Koberidze. It is available to watch on BFI Player and Apple TV.
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