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 pixelated W595 Sony Ericsson phone camera, Dry Leaf stands as a palpable salvo on cinematic degrowth. While director Alexandre Koberidze teeters on the edge of a formal gimmick to challenge technological tyranny, his characters swim against the false currents of modern life. Taking an audacious leap of faith after his breakthrough What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, and harkening back to his low-res debut Let the Summer Never Come Again, Koberidze reignites the threadbare wonders of cinematic language in spectacular, big-screen fashion.

The film celebrated its world premiere in the main competition at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2025, where it received a Special Mention. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director Alexandre Koberidze.

In football, a "dry leaf" is a kick with an unpredictable landing of the ball – much like our characters who surrender to the journey and trust the wind to lead them. - Director's Note, Alexandre Koberidze

Stylistically, Koberidze follows on from his low-resolution debut “Let the Summer Never Come Again”: once again, he uses extremely low resolution to create a poetic blur, a kind of digital impressionism, with images that seem to come from a dream that refuses to come into focus. Sunsets, goats, fluttering branches – magical and fragile. “Dry Leaf” is a questioning of vision itself, carried by a formal consistency that extends to the heartbreaking finale. A stroke of luck. A masterpiece. A must-see.- Around the World in 14 Films

This is a pioneering use of old, ephemeral tech to invent new, eternal cinema, that is so persuasive of its own whimsical worldview that to emerge 186 minutes later is to feel slightly attacked by the garish, hi-def sharpness of reality, and to wonder where all the wonder has gone. -Variety