“Irakli thought about the road. How wonderful it is that there are roads”

There is nothing quite like the feeling of being on the open road, which is precisely what this quote is describing. These words appear at the very end of Dry Lead (Georgian: ხმელი ფოთოლი), another ambitious and daring work emerging from the mind of Alexander Koberidze, who has not only made a steady case for himself as perhaps the greatest living Georgian filmmaker, but as one of the finest artists of his generation, and someone who seems to be redefining cinema on his own terms, crafting unforgettable existential tapestries that don’t fit into any coherent patterns and consistently defy all kinds of categorisation. His most recent offering after his breakthrough with What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, which brought him to the attention of many viewers and established him as an important player in the contemporary European arthouse, this film is yet another glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in contemporary Georgia, showing their trials and tribulations in a way that is both simple and poetic. The story revolves around Irakli, whose daughter (a photographer) sets off to begin her life on her own, leaving behind only a brief letter outlining her intentions to leave their home and her desire not to be found until she is ready to re-enter their lives. Sensing that something is amiss, Irakli and his travelling companion, Levani (who also happens to be invisible), set out on a trip through the rural parts of the country, visiting various football stadiums, which were his daughter’s particular area of interest, hoping to find her or at least unearth some information on her whereabouts.

This ties into the film’s title, which refers to a soccer metaphor (which alludes to a particularly skilful kick in which the ball moves in an unpredictable but ultimately successful manner), which becomes the governing idea of the film as a whole, which is similarly unpredictable and based around unknowable motion. What starts as a relatively conventional mystery about a man searching for his daughter eventually flourishes into a poignant stream-of-consciousness odyssey in which a disappearance is investigated but never solved, the search for the young woman being the impetus for the narrative, but also the source of its intentional resistance towards any kind of resolution. Touching on memory, grief and social history, while avoiding any kind of linear logic, Dry Leaf is a melancholic and mystical voyage into the human condition, a film that is both playful and elegiac, the kind of contradiction that has always fueled the director’s steadfast fascination with exploring everyday life and the people who reside within.

Dry Leaf is not an easy film, but we certainly did not need to wait to see it before making such a judgment, since the director has never been one to craft works that are entirely accessible or can be easily described or analysed. However, as is often the case with filmmakers who approach their craft in a more puzzling manner, the only method to truly comprehend their work is by taking it one step at a time, unpacking it and searching for meaning. We can start with the themes of the film, which are the most digestible aspects of this fascinating project, and ultimately prove to be the elements that guide us through the film. The story is relatively simple, and certainly not difficult to follow – Irakli is going on a metaphysical journey through rural Georgia, searching for his daughter, which he recognises is a fool’s errand, but one that he simply cannot avoid, since it is his duty as a parent to do what he can to ensure her safety, regardless of the cost. The narrative is quite simple, especially since Koberidze designs it to be a series of vignettes, each one featuring either long stretches in which we see Irakli driving through the countryside or encountering people who he hopes can help him get a step or two closer to finding his elusive daughter.

However, this is only the core of the film, and far from the only aspect that drives the story forward. Interestingly, despite being a film about characters constantly being on the move, there are very few actual narrative progressions throughout Dry Leaf – the film ends in the same way it began, a series of mystifying images that capture the day-to-day life of people in contemporary Georgia, and where the protagonist is not any closer to finding his daughter, but rather having resigned into a state of stubborn acceptance, forced to admit that she is better off being left to her own devices. The people he meets along the way all seem earnest in their attempts to help, even when every one of them proves to be unreliable narrators of sorts, their accounts contradicting or distorting reality, indicating that a single objective truth, while appealing in theory, can never truly exist in practice, and that the further Irakli gets on this journey, the more his daughter becomes an abstract presence. The use of the character of Levani is particularly intriguing, since he is designated as Irakli’s travelling companion, and someone with whom he has long conversation, but yet we only hear his voice, suggesting that he may not be an actual character, but rather the embodiment of memory and friendship, the tangible manifestation of the narrative and its ambiguous nature, something that exists at the perfect intersection between the metaphorical, the supernatural and the psychological. All of this works towards defining Dry Leaf as a series of destabilising moments, challenging realism without becoming directly fantastical in the process.

This is naturally only one interpretation, and Dry Leaf is by no means the kind of film that intends to portray any belief in the idea that only a single analysis is possible. However, once we take a stance on what this story could potentially represent, it becomes far easier to understand some of its more concrete elements, such as in the filmmaking itself. One aspect that has drawn most of the attention to this film is the visual aesthetic, in which the director chooses to forego all the impressive technology that has been made available to him, and instead opts to film the entire film on an old Sony Ericsson W595 mobile phone (the same method he used in one of his earlier films, Let the Summer Never Come Again, his directorial debut), a remnant of the past that has been defunct since 2008, and which has here been chosen as the vessel through which Koberidze would craft the film. Some may consider this a cheap gimmick or a perverse assault on the senses, and while it does take some time to become truly acclimated to this approach, we can appreciate the ingenuity of doing something so offbeat that it becomes almost entirely respectable, and frankly, beyond impressive. The pixelated images and unstable motion, combined with washed-out colours and the fact that very little can actually be in focus, lead to an image quality that is crude, difficult to follow, and ultimately truly compelling.

This not only evokes the feeling that we have stumbled onto some incredibly personal footage contained in a private device, but also alludes to the deeper commentary, which revolves around creating a sense of fragility and impermanence, a kind of temporal displacement that the director uses as the foundation for what proves to be quite an impressive piece of filmmaking. We can always appreciate when someone is willing to take a bold swing, and this film is the very definition of such an approach – the lo-fi visuals may seem crude, but they have an unconventional beauty, forcing us to shift our focus away from just luxuriating in the natural beauty of rural Georgia, and instead focusing on what the images represent, and how they contribute to the collapsing of the past, present and future into one homogenous stream of abstract ideas. The concept of memory is keenly reflected in many of the film’s landmark scenes, especially in how the tacky, low-grade footage speaks to the degradation of memory and the challenges of enduring a life in which so much clarity has begun to fall away in the process of seeking meaning. Dry Leaf functions as a sensory experience, with the images and sounds (particularly the blurring of the score composed by Giorgi with the natural sonic landscape) blending to create an extraordinarily immersive work, allowing these locations to take on a feeling of being both ancient and newly-discovered, a fascinating contrast that speaks to the film’s core themes.

The landscapes of rural Georgia through which Dry Leaf moves are not merely settings but states of mind, unfolding as quiet collaborators in Irakli’s search. There are moments where he speaks to characters that are positioned as invisible figures, but rather than suggesting a moment of speculative fiction or fantasy, it alludes to the idea of the protagonist speaking directly with the landscape, which sits in quiet majesty, offering wisdom without any clear answers. Koberidze films open plains, village roads, and mountain regions with an attentiveness that resists both romanticisation and documentary neutrality, showing a simplicity on which the film is beautifully constructed, while hinting at a sense of magical realism that shrouds the entirety of the story and propels it forward. Football fields recur with particular insistence, which are often empty, marginal, or half-forgotten, suggesting spaces once charged with communal energy now left to weather and memory, the sites of communal memory, masculine ritual and the desire to be a part of something much larger than us, even for just a few brief moments. These fields echo Lisa’s own photographic project, but they also function as sites of suspended meaning, places where action once occurred and might occur again, yet presently does not. The terrain feels both recognisably real and faintly estranged from reality, as though viewed from a slight temporal offset.

This sensation is heightened by the film’s refusal to orient the viewer clearly within space or time; journeys feel less like forward motion than lateral drifting. Villages blend into one another, encounters bleed together with a quiet intensity that alludes to much deeper themes lingering beneath the surface, and the natural world seems to watch more than it reveals, emphasing the director’s acknowledgement that there is always going to be a steadfast connection between modernity and the natural world, something that cannot ever be entirely removed from any discussion on our existence. The pacing encourages a dreamlike attentiveness, in which repetition becomes hypnotic rather than redundant, and where we are shrouded in a sense of mystery and longing that becomes far more about situating ourselves in a particular moment in time, rather than delivering a specific message in the process. The landscape absorbs contradiction, building itself around the act of truth and rumour, presence and absence, without resolving them or offering any kind of answers in the process. In taking such an approach, Dry Leaf transforms Georgia into a stage for one of the most beautifully daunting explorations of the human condition, one where physical distance mirrors emotional dislocation, and where moving through space feels akin to wandering through the overlapping strata of memory, grief, and imagination.

Dry Leaf is a film that will not be appealing to everyone – the slow pace (running over three hours in length), the aesthetic approach and the fact that it is driven primarily by atmosphere more than its narrative means that it is the very definition of an acquired taste, and one that will not find as wide of an audience as we may hope for something this extraordinary and unique. Ultimately, the film is not concerned with solving the mystery of Lisa’s disappearance so much as with examining what disappearance does to people and to the stories that they tell to help us navigate unfathomable challenges. There is an argument to be made that this film is covertly not about a father searching for his daughter, who has flown the coop, but rather a sombre allegory for grief, and how it can sometimes feel like a never-ending, nonsensical journey in which every turn provides both answers and obstacles. Irakli’s journey yields no cathartic revelation, only an accumulation of partial truths and competing impressions that resist synthesis and make his journey all the more complex. Yet this refusal of closure feels purposeful rather than withholding, as it offers us invaluable insights into the protagonist’s own journey of self-realisation and his quiet acceptance of the parts of life he cannot change, but rather must simply acknowledge as being unavoidable.

Koberidze proposes uncertainty as a condition of being, one that cinema is uniquely equipped to hold without resolving, suggesting that to search is not always to find, but to learn how to remain attentive in the absence of answers, and simply know that this is all part of our personal journey. In this sense, Dry Leaf becomes a meditation on grief (in various forms) that avoids melodrama, favouring instead a quiet recalibration of how the world is seen and felt after loss. It is a film that requires a lot from the viewer – radical patience and the complete suspension of disbelief, which opens our mind up to fully embracing the unconventional nature of a film that is formally inventive, narratively dynamic and deeply compelling in both style and substance, an active attempt to abandon the obsession with clarity and momentum that impedes so many modern cinematic works. Koberidze trusts the viewer to drift, to misinterpret, to linger, allowing this film to exist as a dynamic and daring existential odyssey. Returning to its titular metaphor, the film behaves like the “dry leaf” kick it invokes: launched with intention, carried by invisible currents, and landing somewhere unexpected. Where it comes to rest will differ for each viewer, but its motion, which can be simultaneously erratic, melancholic, and strangely buoyant, lingers on in our mind. One emerges not with answers, but with a sharpened sensitivity to the fragile, flickering ways meaning moves through the world when certainty has quietly slipped away, a truly stunning and inventive work of contemporary experimental drama.