What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? review – a Georgian World Cup winner

In what is possibly the most gloriously offbeat piece of World Cup counter-programming ever attempted, the utterly beguiling What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, by Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze, arrives in UK cinemas. Set in the city of Kutaisi, against the backdrop of the previous World Cup, the film is a playfully meandering, rangy story that threads together teasing hints of magical realism, a tale of love at first sight, talking drainpipes and sentient surveillance cameras, and the football-watching preferences of the local stray dog population.

Central to the story are Lisa and Giorgi, a pharmacist and a footballer respectively, who meet by chance and arrange a date the following day. But an evil eye observes and curses them: both change appearance overnight. There’s a languid kind of magic to Koberidze’s approach, which, with its enchanting score, digressive montages and sparse dialogue, has roots in silent cinema but also feels refreshingly and genuinely original.