Dry Leaf

A young woman’s disappearance prompts an investigative road trip tinted with magical realism in this strangely gorgeous, wildly lo-fi Georgian gem.

When sports photographer Lisa vanished, she was working on an assignment documenting ramshackle football fields across the country. She has left behind a letter for her parents in Tbilisi instructing them not to follow her – a request that her father, Irakli (played by the filmmaker’s own father, David Koberidze), disregards. He attempts to retrace her cross-country path together with her colleague Levan – who, like many of the characters in this gentle and transfixing saga, happens to be invisible – but theirs is destined to be a sublimely digressive quest, punctuated by curious encounters.

Shot entirely on an old Sony Ericsson camera phone and unfolding across an epic timescale, Alexandre Koberidze’s latest feature — winner of both a Competition Special Mention and the FIPRESCI Prize at Locarno Film Festival – combines the sense of melancholic whimsy that distinguished his previous feature, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (MIFF 2021), with its daring formal gambit, giving its images of the Georgian countryside a surprising, pixelated beauty at times verging on abstraction.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival