The illustrated memoir “Rezo,” directed by Leo Gabriadze, combines documentary and animation to tell the story of Gabriadze’s father, Rezo, a polymathic artist whose career has included work as screenwriter and as the founder of a marionette theater in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The imagery, drawn by Rezo himself and animated by Sveta Matrosova and Elizaveta Astretsova, has a charmingly personal quality. Although this Russian-language feature covers a tumultuous period in history, primarily from World War II until Rezo’s unexpected, career-starting introduction to the power of art, it never once resembles a checklist of sweeping events.

The narrative teems with eccentric details. We learn how Rezo, as a boy, read books in a kerosene-heated library with a rat to keep him company. Lenin and Stalin emerge from portraits at his school to discuss whether his tardiness should get him expelled. Filmed in sepia-toned interviews, the now 82-year-old Rezo remembers living with his grandparents in Georgia, where the back of an outhouse had a spectacular view and a “pit full of plankton” became a treasured swimming hole.