Dry Leaf | Alexandre Koberidze

Alexandre Koberidze's third film, Dry Leaf, takes its name from a Brazilian football term – folha seca – which describes a kick whose trajectory and landing spot are unpredictable. A beloved inspiration for his previous film as well, football operates here as a “narrative kick”, since our protagonist, Irakli, sets out on a journey to find his missing daughter by following the traces of rural football fields in the Georgian countryside. After that kick though, that initial momentum, we find ourselves alongside Irakli and his invisible travel companion, Levan, on roads that are long and winding, pixelated, and blurry, enveloped by golden-green meadows.

There are many descriptive words that Dry Leaf can evoke in the viewer a posteriori. “A cinematic journey”, for instance – often used as a catchy, simple platitude in trade writing – may  nonetheless be among the terms that come closest to capturing the film’s expressivity.  An expressivity which lies elsewhere, beyond verbal language, channeling what might be described as the “experiential”. It is a journey along which one gleans the images on the screen – images that, without their gaze, would appear ordinary, trivial: a sleeping puppy, cows looking at the camera, ripe apricots on a plate. Dry Leaf reminds us that cinema is not made of images as such, but of our encounters with them – encounters that render the experience precious, deeply personal, and sometimes even incommunicable. However, incorrigible cinephiles that we are, we still try to communicate that experience, even though words never quite add up to our emotions, impressions, and sensations; and being lost for words, like being lost within the film itself, only conveys its impact on us all the more.

At the Locarno Film Festival, we met Alexandre Koberidze in a small room behind the screen of the Palexpo (FEVI), while his film was being shown to a wider public audience for the very first time. We sat across from each other, both excited and anxious – probably for different reasons – and chatted for forty minutes, during which every blabbering, far-fetched metaphor and comparison attested to how exquisite and unique Dry Leaf was.