Following its sold-out success at the Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival.
After a young sports photographer vanishes without warning, a father sets out on a road trip to find her, travelling across the Georgian countryside, passing from quiet village to village, meeting kind strangers and speaking with children playing football along the way.
Dry Leaf — shot on a W595 Sony Ericsson — premiered in the Main Competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, where it won both a Competition Special Mention and the FIPRESCI Prize.
The W595 was also the camera Alexandre shot his debut feature Let Summer Never Come Again on, which won the Grand Prix at the FID Marseille. His sophomore film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? premiered at Berlinale Competition in 2021, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI prize.
“We are so very pleased to bring Dry Leaf to cinemas in Australia — one of the most radical films of recent years and one with a warm, low-resting heart,” said a spokesperson at Plainwater Films. “Alexandre has created an experience that induces a trip like no other. It’s a dream alive with pixels that invites us to look at our own world anew.”
As to the title, the director explains:
“In the late 1950s, Brazilian footballer Didi introduced a technique for kicking the ball called the “dry leaf.” Just as a dry leaf falls from a tree and it’s impossible for the human eye to calculate where it will land, with this technique it’s impossible for the goalkeeper to predict the exact trajectory of the ball. The thing is, it remains a mystery for the shooter as well…
… But just like Didi's ball, once it starts to fall, nobody knows where it will go — and so it is with our protagonists. They have a goal but no precise idea of how to reach it, so they let the circumstances guide them. And so it was with us, the few people who made this film: we let ourselves fall and trusted the winds to take us somewhere we couldn’t imagine.”
Dry Leaf releases exclusively at Cinema Nova in Melbourne and Golden Age Cinemas in Sydney. More screenings are set to be announced.
The film was directed, written, shot and edited by Alexandre Koberidze, and produced by Alexandre, Mariam Shatberashvili, and Luise Hauschild. It stars David Koberidzeand Otar Nijaradze and the music and sound design is by composer Giorgi Koberidze.