Dry Leaf - Aleksandre Koberidze

Dry Leaf, one of the big winners at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, is a unique cinematic experience in the truest sense of the word—a film that only director Alexandre Koberidze could have concocted.

Lisa, a photographer who captures abandoned football fields, has gone missing, prompting her father Irakli—played by Koberidze’s own father—to set out on a journey with Levani, Lisa’s invisible boyfriend. As they traverse the verdant Georgian landscape and encounter one chance meeting after another, the film transforms into a magical, hypnotic journey. The grainy images, filmed with an old Sony Ericsson phone, take on a painterly, impressionistic glow and are enriched by a haunting soundtrack composed by the director’s brother. Thus, Dry Leaf becomes an intimate family portrait and a meditation on disappearance and letting go.

Alexandre Koberidze, born in Tbilisi, studied directing at the German Film & TV Academy Berlin. During his studies, he directed several successful films, starting with his short Colophon (2015) and in 2017 his first feature Let the summer never come again which won multiple awards at many festivals worldwide, including the Grand Prix at FID Marseille. His graduation film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? premiered at the Berlinale in 2021, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI prize.