Dry Leaf

If you are looking for a film that reinvents cinematic storytelling, and if the cinema is a sacred space for you to pause and witness miracles, then this film is for you. Dry Leaf is a small-scale epic and a metaphysical road movie in which a father sets off in search of his daughter, who has been photographing football pitches. The daughter’s invisible friend joins the quest. Together, they drive through the summer countryside of Georgia, scouting football pitches and asking passers-by about her. The search yields no results, until… 

The film’s director and cinematographer, Alexandre Koberidze, has cast his own father in the lead role. Sitting in the passenger seat of the car cruising through the countryside is the filmmaker himself, searching for his film. 

Koberidze previously directed one of the finest films of recent years, the football symphony What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (R&A 2021), and the picture-perfect 16mm film of that work has now been swapped in Dry Leaf for something even more beautiful: the 144 pixels of an old Sony Ericsson phone. In the hands of cinematic magician Koberidze, this vintage digital technology is transformed into a paintbrush peering into the film’s horizon—used to paint, with immense gentleness, impressionistic pastorals of the quest and the wonders of life and football.

Jimi Rosling (translated by Kati Ilomäki)