#643 - Alexandre Koberidze on Dry Leaf

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with Dry Leaf director Alexandre Koberidze and composer Giorgi Koberidze as they discuss their new film. An NYFF63 Currents selection, Dry Leaf opens at Film at Lincoln Center on Friday, March 20 with Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/leaf

This conversation was moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.

In soccer, a “dry leaf” is a kick that produces an unpredictable landing of the ball. Shaken by the disappearance of his grown daughter, a sports photographer goes looking for her through a Georgian landscape strewn with football fields. An invisible companion in tow, he meets potential witnesses whose perspectives prove distorted or contradictory. Confirming his position as one of contemporary cinema’s most intrepid artists, director Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, NYFF59) shot the film on an antiquated Sony Ericsson phone. What might seem a perverse choice reveals itself, over Dry Leaf’s epic length, as a brilliant thematic gesture that elicits its own temporal register. Set to a haunting score by the director’s brother Giorgi, this melancholic mystery presents Georgia’s open plains and mountain regions in alien, oneiric contexts. One emerges from its transporting rhythms with a fresh perspective on the world.

The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.