Heretic has acquired world sales rights to Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s “Dry Leaf” ahead of its world premiere in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
The director’s latest tells the story of sports photographer Lisa, who suddenly vanishes without a trace while photographing rural soccer stadiums in villages across Georgia. Setting out with the woman’s mysterious best friend, her father, Irakli, embarks on a journey to find her.
Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s trailer:
Taking its name from a 1950s soccer technique introduced by Brazilian footballer Didi, where the ball’s unpredictable flight mimics a falling leaf drifting in the wind, “Dry Leaf” uses that central metaphor to explore themes of uncertainty, fate and surrender, as Koberidze explains in a director’s statement provided to Variety.
“Try to remember a leaf falling from above — how it changes direction and speed, sometimes dropping fast and straight to the ground, only for everything to shift suddenly. It begins to hover slowly and calmly before changing its path again, and so on, depending on the height, the wind, the humidity, and countless other factors we’re not even aware of,” the director writes. “Even when it reaches the ground, the leaf’s journey isn’t over — a gust of wind or a little boy on his way to school might carry it to a different neighborhood, or someone might sweep it into a bag with thousands of other leaves and send it to a place where leaves are burned.
“But just like Didi’s ball, once it starts to fall, nobody knows where it will go — and so it is with our protagonists,” the director continues. “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. This fall continues, and there’s no way back.”
Koberidze, who won the Grand Prix at FID Marseille in 2017 for his feature debut “Let the Summer Never Come Again,” broke out with his sophomore feature “What Do We See When We Look At the Sky?,” which premiered to widespread acclaim in the Berlinale’s main competition in 2021. Variety‘s Jessica Kiang heaped praise upon the “marvelous, mischievous” movie, which won the festival’s Fipresci Prize, describing it as a “witty, warm, surprising modern folktale.”
“Dry Leaf” is produced by Mariam Shatberashvili and Luise Hauschild for New Matter Films (Germany) in co-production with Alexandre Koberidze (Georgia). The film’s immersive score was composed by Giorgi Koberidze, the director’s brother. It features the director’s father, David Koberidze, as well as Irina Chelidze, Vakhtang Fanchulidze Giorgi Bochorishvili and Otar Nijaradze.
“‘Dry Leaf’ is a mesmerizing and emotionally rich journey, crafted with rare freedom and quiet boldness,” said Ioanna Stais, Heretic’s head of sales and acquisitions. “Shot entirely on a Sony Ericsson, the film turns constraint into pure cinematic poetry. Its selection for Concorso Internazionale at Locarno affirms Koberidze’s singular vision, and we’re proud to be bringing this unforgettable work to audiences and buyers seeking something truly original.”
Along with “Dry Leaf,” Heretic will be in Locarno with “The Birthday Party,” starring Willem Dafoe, a film the Athens-based production and sales outfit produced. Premiering in the Piazza Grande, it’s being sold by both Heretic and Bankside.