Mimino

Mimino (1977) is Georgiy Daneliya's bittersweet comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Valiko Mizandari, nicknamed Mimino — "falcon" in Georgian — flies a battered helicopter that hauls mail, fruit, chickens and the odd sheep between mountain villages. He knows every ridge by heart. Then he spots an old flight-school friend stepping off a sleek jetliner, and small-time cargo runs stop feeling like enough.

So Mimino heads to Moscow to retrain for the big airlines. His hotel roommate turns out to be Rubik, an Armenian truck driver mistakenly checked in as a professor of endocrinology, and that mix-up blooms into one of Soviet cinema's warmest friendships. Vakhtang Kikabidze and Frunzik Mkrtchyan trade lines — the elevator squabble, the tearful phone call routed through Tel Aviv — that fans still quote by heart. Yevgeny Leonov and Elena Proklova round out the cast.

Daneliya wraps the laughs around a quiet ache of homesickness: the higher Mimino climbs, the harder his green valleys pull him back. The film took the Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival, and its song "Chito-Grito" became a folk standard. If you like Georgian humor and comedies that aren't afraid to turn sad, this one belongs on your list. Stream Mimino (1977) online on iFILM.