Dry Leaf

(Aleksandre Koberidze, 2025, Georgia/Germany, 187 minutes)

 

Lisa, a sports photographer, vanishes off into the greener pastures of the Georgian countryside, traces of her passing embedded in the landscape like clues. Her father, Irakli (David Koberidze), picks up her scent in the ochre foliage and communal soccer fields she documented for her last assignment. His search-and-rescue trip defies her wishes not to be followed. With a disembodied voice in his passenger seat, he embarks on a winding pastoral picaresque, marked by the recurring gaggles of adolescents, wild dogs, and oral histories he encounters along the way. Undulating between impressionistic reverie and subversive detective story, Irakli’s near-fruitless search invites us to see—with renewed eyes—the quotidian elements which constitute both cinema and life. Shot with a very outdated W595 Sony Ericsson phone camera, Dry Leaf stands as a palpable salvo on cinematic degrowth, ably finding a genuine beauty through smart compositions and boxy pixels. While director Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, screened December 2021 at the Webster Film Series) teeters on the edge of a formal gimmick to challenge technological tyranny, his characters swim against the false currents of modern life. 

 

In Georgian with English subtitles.