Vancouver Premiere

“[One] of the most original and rewarding works you’ll see any year.”

Mark Peranson, The Globe and Mail

Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s much-anticipated follow-up to his enchanting festival charmer What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021) is among the best films of 2025, no small feat for a three-hour movie whose formal gambit had many questioning its baseline tolerability. The premise is simple: Lisa has disappeared while documenting derelict soccer pitches across rural Georgia. Her father (played by the director’s own, David Koberidze) recruits her friend Levani and the pair embark on a road trip to find her. The kicker: Dry Leaf (like Koberidze’s 2017 debut) is shot exclusively on a circa 2008 Sony Ericsson cellphone, rendering the countryside and characters into woolly, pixelated forms—more gestural shapes than clearly articulated objects. Add to that a clever dose of magic realism and it’s a miracle Koberidze manages to pull it off, delivering not just a genuinely moving meditation on impermanence but some of the year’s most breathtaking images too.

One of the Best Films of 2025 (#9)
Sight and Sound

“Bizarre and wonderful … A joy for devotees of the strange, singular, and sometimes transcendent … This is a pioneering use of old, ephemeral tech to invent new, eternal cinema.”

Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Ponders life’s small wonders and ineffable beauty … A rare narrative film that seems to exist in a state of suspended animation. In Dry Leaf, time isn’t of the essence—it is the essence.”

Jordan Cronk, Filmmaker Magazine
Media