Dry Leaf(2025), Alexandre Koberidze – review
"Dry Leaf": Low-resolutions on the big screen
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| ©Alexandre Koberidze, New Matter Films |
Irakli receives a letter from his daughter Lisa that she must go away for a while. Worried that something might have happened, he decides to go looking for her. The only thing known is that she was supposed to photograph rural football fields all over Georgia. Together with Lisa's friend Levan, Irakli sets off on a journey to seek out those fields and, in the process, find his daughter.
For the rest of the three-hour runtime, we see
the two driving around the country, through small villages, looking for the
football fields, which often consist of nothing more than two goalposts made of
some wood. Or rather, we don't see them. Because, as we learn early on through
a narrator, Levan, like many other characters in the film, is invisible. Apart
from that comment, this circumstance is never addressed but instead just
accepted by everyone in the film. Thus, we, the viewers, also have to simply
accept this. But Koberidze doesn't stop there. The whole film is shot in an
unusually low resolution that makes it hard to make out what we see on screen.
Only as the camera slowly moves in are we able to get a glimpse of what
actually is there, hidden behind the pixels: trees turn into humans, bushes
into donkeys, and cars into dogs. An ethereal, otherworldly quality haunts
those pictures, evoking a sense of memory and a culture forgotten. But even
through all those pixels we can experience the beauty of the images. Koberidze
asks what actually constitutes beauty, what is necessary for it — according to
him, the quality of images is not defined by technicality but by what is
actually shown. Or again, not shown. He places equal importance on the unseen
as he does on the seen. This is shown in part through all the invisible
characters or unseen ones like Lisa; we will never meet her, never see her; she
is a ghost that is everywhere and nowhere. Like the narrator, we only hear her
at the beginning and the end, in the form of her letters. She knows her father
had been looking for her and is disappointed that he didn’t trust her but also
happy since that means he really loves her. Through having been in the same
places, Irakli feels connected to her even in her physical absence. This
feeling of connecting with people and places is key; Irakli often spends too
much time in one place, becoming absorbed by nature, the people, the football
fields, the country. More often than not, he has to be reminded by Levan to
move on, to keep searching. Koberidze isn't concerned with any narrative or
creating a sense of urgency. He wants us to focus on those low-resolution
images, as the actual search becomes secondary, even for the characters.
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| ©Alexandre Koberidze, New Matter Films |
It is no accident that the narrator only
appears in the beginning and end, the only two parts where we have some
semblance of narrative. Koberidze, as well as questioning our understanding of
beauty, also tries to find another form of filmmaking: one that is more poetic.
It is daring, and it pays off. I too laughed at the notion that certain people
will just be invisible, putting it off as a budget measure (which maybe in part
it is). But the longer the film went on, the more I felt immersed in this
unique cinematic reality. It is a meditation on the medium, how we perceive,
which rules it has to follow and which it can break.
And while there is beauty in all of this, if we
as the viewer allow it to happen, there is also a sadness. The pitches are
often being abandoned, forgotten, or built over, leaving less space for the
kids and the sport. In Lisa's letter near the end, she talks about the sadness
of seeing a sports school being demolished, and the despair in her father’s
eyes as it was happening. Dry Leaf dwells in that sadness but also in hope;
Irakli asks some children where they will play now that their field will be
destroyed, and they simply answer “everywhere.”
In the end, Dry Leaf is a poem about seeing,
amateur sport, beauty, and a country. A three-hour search for meaning in
low-resolution images. If one is willing to let it happen, the mesmerizing
flickering of pixels creates a rhythm that is impossible to escape. The upbeat
soundtrack is only adding to that. But it is also a work about traveling, about
connecting with people, places, your daughter, or a whole country. As Irakli
says so poignantly at the end, "How wonderful it is that there are roads."
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